It has been several weeks since I have seen this patient, but this patient was one of my most interesting cases this semester. The patient present to clinic for just a normal 6 month recall appointment, but had gingival swelling on the papilla between teeth 8 and 9. The patient said that their gums would swelling and then go down. With closer examination, I discovered that tooth #9 had class 3 mobility (this tooth had a crown on it). Also when I probed the area, pus drained out and the probe reading was a 12mm.
Safe to say we order a PA for that tooth and signed up for a dental exam. The xray did not reveal anything that was out of the ordinary, but there was some bone loss are the tooth. When the doctor came over to take a look at it, he agreed that the tooth was mobile and wanted to refer the patient to an Endodontist for further examination. The doctor said the reason nothing was revealed on the xray was because fracture teeth rarely show up on radiographs. And the reason for referring to Endo was because they might be able to save the tooth, instead of just extracting it.
I referred the patient like instructed and made him another appointment to finish his cleaning, but the patient never showed. I was disappointed because I wanted to see if they extracted the tooth or were able to save it. But I was able to read the SOAP notes and saw that they were not able to save the patient's tooth. :(
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