Relieving the Pain of an Abscessed Tooth

Video Transcript

"I'm Dr. Joe Neely and I practice with the Barton Oaks Dental Group. We're going to talk about relieving the pain of an abscessed tooth. And abscess is an infection that's trapped somewhere. So in the case of an abscessed tooth the infection is trapped between the hard outer shell of the tooth, the ligament and bone, which hold the tooth in your mouth. And so the pain is caused by swelling. By pressure, especially in between two hard objects. If you get an infection inside the tooth that has spread through the root tip into the ligament that holds the tooth in it becomes like hydraulic in nature. Any kind of pressure on the tooth is magnified many times over. So the pain is relieved by reducing the pressure. The pressure is reduced by reducing the volume of the infection through antibiotics. Allowing a vent for the infection either by drilling a hole through the top of the tooth into the main chamber or through the gum and bone to the area around the tip or apex of the tooth. You relieve the pain of an abscessed tooth by relieving the pressure."