Dental pain and diagnosis?
Patients often present with dental pain and would like to get a diagnosis and appropriate dental treatment. They often complain of a tooth ache, which is not very specific, since There can be a number of causes for tooth pain and there are many differential causes. Often my residients and students try diagnosing using the dental radiographs as their primary tool. Dental radiographs are just one of the items in our tool box. For me , the first thing I do is ask the patients a bunch of questions... When do you have pain? do you have pain on biting, pain after eating, hot or cold sensitivity or prolonged pain. The answers to these questions have a lot to do with narrowing down why the patient is having pain. I definitely look at the radiographs to see if their is an obvious problem in the quadrant they are feeling pain( perapical radiolucency or a large carious lesion). If a tooth is sensitive to cold it means that it is vital and any teeth with root canals in the area can not be th