Hi, my names Dr. Antolak from thegentledentist.com, your Shelby Township, Dentist. Our phone number is 586-247-3500. There are things that people have a lot of, especially living in Michigan are sinus headaches. The sinuses are an area, that’s very interesting because the sinuses come close to the tooth roots of teeth and we can see those a lot on x rays. For example, I had a patient come in today she had came up in this region here and in knowing that the background is for sinuses. So what happened is, I make this little dark round and just point something out here. Is, right here this is an x-ray of where the sinus cavity is, above these roots of the teeth. And so these roots actually stick out into the sinus or just maybe with a little layer of bone that’s around them. So there could be some difficulty with confusion with diagnosing between sinuses and toothaches. So this patient had a toothache and in my estimation is it could have been caused by her sinuses because she was having a sinus issue. The odd part about this is, she was having pain up in this region here where these teeth are here. She had her sinuses over here. But I’m looking at her x-rays, and all the teeth seem to be fine.
I went ahead and took another X-ray of her and, we noticed that she had a deep cavity in another place. This is the first time she came in. She came in with this bad toothache that she tried to go to sleep with. We noticed at this time here that this is called a bitewing x-ray of her. And, in this area, I all of a sudden noticed that this tooth here, if you look here, it had a deep cavity. And where this deep cavity was, is I’ll make it a little darker there okay so you can see that now really well. This darkness right here was a cavity and this is her nerve that sits right here. So, she had pain up in here. I couldn’t figure out anything that was happening. She had sinus problems, which were in the teeth that were further back. And yet I saw that she had a specific problem down here. So, lots of different things to consider. One thing that’s in common with pain with the jaw in the mouth, is that you can have what’s called referred pain.
Referred pain is pain that feels like its taking place in one area, but yet the source of the pain is a completely different area. And the reason why that it is, is in our jaw, we have something called the trigeminal nerve. And tri means 3. And so there’s branches of the trigeminal nerve. One branch gives sensation to the lip and the teeth on the bottom. One gives sensation to the upper jaw and the upper teeth. And the other part goes near the eye. The human body can be trick sometimes. So she’s feeling sensitivity up here, yet she’s having a problem down here. She didn’t even come with the problem down there. So I told her, Let’s go ahead. I’ll get you numb on the lower and let’s see what happens. So I numbed her up on the lower, and her toothache went away on top. So, to me, that said that there’s more than likely an issue with the tooth that was on the bottom. So I went ahead and performed a root canal on that tooth, and when we did that you can see right here. We did a root canal in this tooth, and this is where the, the root canal is. And we removed the infected nerve out of that tooth. And, I shall not call her a complainer, and see how she is doing today. Um, but the thing is, is things are not always out, things are not always as they appear in dentistry. That’s why you need to have experienced clinician. One who is going to spend the time getting good accurate history which is important and also to be able to look outside of what’s being presented. Even though I know that this patient was having the problem here. She said it was very vague so she wasn’t sure exactly where it was. It could have been from clinching her teeth or biting. It could have been from her sinuses giving her problem. But little did I expect it would be from the tooth on the bottom until I delved deeper into the problem and really try to create a good diagnosis. So this is how your sinuses, your nerves can all become infected, and it takes experienced clinician to really make a determination of where the problem is. So if you have sinus headaches, sometimes if you clench your teeth together and you have pain there or even, you know, sometimes people, their sinuses, when they fly, when they walk down steps, and they have an ache in their teeth from that purpose, or from those situations. Then those are the things that, that can be evaded with the teeth. I know that in the past when a number of years ago there were issues with people actually having their teeth pulled because they thought they had a toothache. So dentistry can be a little tricky and you have to make sure you’re, you’re doing yourself a favor by going to an experienced dentist. And I would like to consider ourselves here at the Gentle Dentist experienced. I have been in practice 25 years. Graduated from the University of Michigan and have a great practice here. So come on and join us. 586-247-3500 is our phone number. Have a great day.