What causes pain in a filled tooth after taking cold drinks?

Question

Hello doctor,

I had my two back molars on the top left side of my mouth filled about three weeks ago and after a few days, everything was fine. No pain, nothing. But a few days ago, I realized that every time I drink hot, cold, and sometimes even room temperature liquids there is a sharp almost piercing pain that lasts for a few seconds. (More so with the cold drink than hot or room temperature drink). It does not hurt to bite down but it does hurt to actually chew something on that side. Even when I take a deep breath through my mouth, the cold air hurts the tooth. The pain feels like the liquid or the air is literally going inside my tooth and releasing that sharp pain. I made an appointment to see my dentist and he said the nerve might be exposed. What does that mean? What kind of procedure needs to be done? Or what do you think is wrong?

Answer 1

Hello,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

First, get a radiograph done for those two teeth, it will tell the status of your teeth. Sometimes, if the filling is high, you experience pain. The filling might be fractured. The nerve exposure means caries has reached till the pulpal horn.

Parts of teeth:

Enamel: a hard mineralized structure that forms the crown part of the tooth.

Dentin: calcified tissue. It is covered by enamel on the crown, cementum on the root part of the tooth and surrounds the entire pulp.

Cementum: specialized calcified substance covering the outer surface of the root of the tooth.

Pulp: consists of nerves.

If caries are present in enamel or dentin filling is done. If caries reaches the pulp, root canal treatment has to be done. The dentist is talking about root canal treatment, in that treatment infected or dead pulp is removed and medicine is filled.