Do not chew or bite on the treated tooth until you have had it restored by your dentist.
Do not eat anything until the numbness in your mouth wears off. This will prevent you from biting your cheek or tongue.
Be sure to brush and floss your teeth as you normally would
If the opening in your tooth was restored with a temporary filling material, it is not unusual for a thin layer to wear off in-between appointments. However, if you think the entire filling has come out, contact our office.
Contact our office right away if you develop any of the following:
- A visible swelling inside or outside of your mouth
- An allergic reaction to medication, including rash, hives or itching (nausea is not an allergic reaction)
- A return of original symptoms
- Your bite feels uneven
For Emergency Treatment, or if the Root Canal was not completed
Be certain to take the recommended medications religiously, especially the Aleve or Motrin as it helps reduce and heal the cause of the pain, inflammation, as well as reducing the pain. Be certain to take the full course of antibiotics, if prescribed. Call us if you are not feeling significantly better than when you came in today, even if you are just concerned or have further questions about your treatment. Your tooth will not return to a totally asymptomatic state until we finish the root canal treatment at your next appointment.
For completed root canal
There is a wound at the end of your tooth that must heal now that we have finished treatment, so it is very normal for your tooth to be sore, reaching a peak within 48 hours and getting better every day until 30 days has passed, after which it should feel much like your other teeth in terms of pain to chewing pressure. It is normal for there to be a different awareness when you chew with this tooth after 30 days, but after 2-3 months it should be hard to tell where we did the root canal treatment.
If you have increasing pain at 2-4 days after treatment call us immediately!
In that case, you are one of the unlucky 2-3% of our patients who experience one last infectious flare-up before the wound heals. If this happens a routine antibiotic regiment will resolve the problem with no decrease in the ultimate outcome. It is rare, so we would be overmedicating 97-98% of our patients if we gave all of them antibiotics after treatment. Finally, be certain to have the final restoration placed in the tooth by your general dentist within 30 days or our treatment will be compromised, possibly requiring retreatment.