For your beautiful smile, you work hard to maintain healthy habits. You brush and floss your pearly whites diligently and you have professional dental cleanings every six months. Still, you will sometimes require a dental restoration in the form of dental fillings. And if you have recently had a filling procedure performed, you may be experiencing short-term tooth sensitivity.
Temperature extremes – the most common sensitivity may come from temperature fluctuations. This can involve breathing in cold air from your mouth or even hot and cold drinks and food. That hot spoonful of mashed potatoes, or biting into a cold orange slice can briefly cause your newly filled tooth to hurt. This will normally go away on its own within a few weeks. If it persists, or if the discomfort is too much for you, we may suggest a desensitizing toothpaste for you to use, or we might apply a desensitizing agent on the tooth directly.
Pressure – sometimes a newly filled tooth may hurt when you bite down. This usually goes away on its own as well, as the tooth adjusts to the filling.
Bite – if the filling is higher than the tooth’s surface and it causes the teeth to come together improperly, the filling may simply need to be reshaped. Once the bite comes together the way it should the pain should stop.
Metals – metals in the mouth can sometimes react to each other initially. For instance, let’s say you have a tooth with a gold crown sitting near the newly filled tooth which may be a silver amalgam filling. At first when the teeth come into contact this may set off a brief reaction, and this goes away fairly quickly as your mouth gets used to these metals together.
Pain signals – occasionally a newly filled tooth will send out pain signals until it gets used to the new filling material in it. What happens is that the surrounding teeth seem to hurt as well. This will go away as your mouth adjusts to the new filling.
Decay – if the filled tooth is hurting because the decay in the tooth was so far down that it was near the tooth pulp, it may be that the decay is too deep, and the tissue is too unhealthy to support the filled tooth. In this situation, if the pain you are feeling is coming from the decay in the filled tooth that occurred near the tooth pulp, it is possible that the tissue is just too unhealthy to support a filling. In this case, a root canal might be needed to remove the damaged tissue.
If your tooth hurts from a newly placed dental filling, don’t worry, the pain should subside soon. Let us know if it is too uncomfortable because we can help. If you have any questions or concerns, please give us a call so our dedicated dentist, Dr. George Hussey, can get you back on track in no time. You can reach our caring dental team in Arlington, Washington at 360.653.5197 today!