Cavitations and root canals

[ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY]

Hi, I'm Errol, recovering from mega jaw cavitation and root canal surgery. Have read Ian's lengthy posting stretching over 5 years with so much interest.

 

[ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY]

Here is my story - hope it assists someone out there in some manner:

Errol’s necrotic cavitation story - I am a generally healthy married 57 year old. We live between the UK and South Africa with sometime in the USA.

For many years I have suffered tooth pain at the very back of my mouth. I have used the words to dentists that ‘the pain seems to be where there are no teeth’. I have often said that the pain ‘is exactly where my wisdom tooth (upper left) used to be’.

All 4 of my wisdom teeth were extracted in 1976 – almost 40 years ago! The upper left tooth was difficult to extract, and my Mum and I recall now it was the only one of the 4 where I did not recover really quickly.

Fast forward 25 to 30 years. I am not sure exactly when but I started having phantom tooth ache (pain where there is no tooth). This was variously accompanied by, or led by sharp left hand side ear ache. And left hand side sinus pain. And sharp pain under and into my left eye – I would often say to my wife that it felt like someone sticking a sharp knife into my left eye. And extreme headaches on the front left hand side of my forehead. In addition I have lived with flu like symptoms for so long now. Continuous nose running, nasal speech, not able to sleep through the night, trying antihistamines and the like etc. I also would often get drowsy or actually fall asleep briefly in the day, even at 9am at my desk, or mid or late afternoon.

At one stage we decided that the cause of the pains must be beer drinking the night before. I only drink low alcohol beer, moderately - 2 to 4 beers maximum. So I switched to red wine, literally one glass, ocassionally two glasses a night. Next morning we’d blame the wine. But of course it was not the cause.

Fast forward to March 2015. We were and still are (post surgery) in South Africa. I felt strange feelings in my cheek and gum – after a day or two it became extreme acute tooth pain – saw the dentist. Did a conventional x-ray, he said that there was nothing there on the x-ray. He put me onto very strong antibiotics and painkillers. About 48 to 60 hours into the antibiotic course the pain mercifully started to subside.

June 2015 – repeat of the above. Dentist said that I should see a Maxilo Facial surgeon to get to the cause. I now know that I am one very lucky guy because the Maxilo guy has his own 360 degree sonar scan. He immediately identified a large area precisely where my upper left wisdom tooth should be, describing it as being necrotic cavitation. He almost fainted when he saw that amalgam (mercury) had been used on the upper tips of the roots of two root canal treated teeth, namely my front upper front right tooth, and its near neighbour 2 to the left. Finally he said that another root canal /crowned tooth, back lower right molar also had signs of necrotic cavitation.

His general approach is to extract all root canal treated teeth. However he conceded that taking out two of my front teeth was not needed or desirable right now. I agreed to the removal of the molar.

A week or so later surgery under general anaesthetic has taken place in a local private hospital. All seems to have gone well. The hole where the wisdom tooth was measured 2.5 cm by 1cm and included a piece of old root, presumably going back to the extraction 40 years ago. The two root canals were treated, the molar removed and its cavitation cleaned and set up to grow healthy bone. All closed with dissolving stitches. It is now day 5 (day 1 I had the op at 8am). I have, as the doc forecast felt to tired to get up and do stuff. But I plan to tomorrow. I was given two very strong slow release painkillers but surprisingly have only used Panado and have not been in any acute pain at all. My wife got me Arnica which has done an amazing job of reducing the bruising and swelling along with Ferrum Phos tissue salts. I am now gargling with salt water.

Ready to attack life again at a hundred miles an hour.

The nasal drip has gone. I am feeling drowsy from the operation but also feeling far more energised, clear headed, sharper – strange words but they are the ones that come to mind right now.

I have discovered the whole sub-culture of anti-conventional wisdom:

· Anti amalgam fillings

· Anti root canals

· Anti wisdom teeth extraction

Conversely there seem to be those who are Anti sonar scanning though I am not clear at all on what grounds. (Google 'Open letter to Dr. Shankland’s patients:' to see the full article which was published in IAN's pages here on Phoenix Rising)

Totally amazing. I have a list of various reference sites which I will share on request.

Overall, I am so relieved and hope that my story may help others.

 

[Hip]

Hi @ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY
Thanks for posting your story, which may well help others in a similar situation.

Do you have any weblinks detailing sonar scanning, and it's ability to detect necrotic cavitations? Is there a list of dentists or clinics that posses such sonar scanners?

I understand that the terms osteomyelitis (inflammation / infection in a bone) and osteonecrosis (death of tissue due to loss of blood supply) are used to describe the processes going on in these dental jaw bone cavitation infections.


Presumably you did not mean to write "anti sonar scanning".

 

[Wayne]

Totally amazing. I have a list of various reference sites which I will share on request.

Hi @@ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY

Thanks for your great report, and congratulations on your getting to the core of many of your health problems. Like Hip, I too am interested in some information on how to contact qualified dentists/oral surgeons and/or clinics that do this kind of specialized diagnostics and surgery. My understanding is they're few and far between.

I'd also be interested in what your surgeries cost, and whether or not the expense might be prohibitive for many who've lost their source of income--like myself and many others on this board.
-
You may be interested in a thread I started several years ago entitled:

Diagnosis Unknown - Story of CFS Recovery

It's about a book written by a man who spent years trying to track down the cause of his wife's CFS-like poor health--finally discovering oral infections were the cause. It's quite a fascinating read, with the entire book being available online for anybody to read.

Please keep us updated!

 

[ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY]

Hi @ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY
Thanks for posting your story, which may well help others in a similar situation.

Do you have any weblinks detailing sonar scanning, and it's ability to detect necrotic cavitations? Is there a list of dentists or clinics that posses such sonar scanners?

I understand that the terms osteomyelitis (inflammation / infection in a bone) and osteonecrosis (death of tissue due to loss of blood supply) are used to describe the processes going on in these dental jaw bone cavitation infections.


Presumably you did not mean to write "anti sonar scanning".

Hi Hip - I'll try answer your queries below:

Thanks for your feedback. I don't have any web links but will visit the surgeon's rooms later this week to record the brand name of the sonar equipment. He referred to it as a 360 degree Sonar Scan. He is out of town this week, but I expect his staff will permit me to see the equipment. If not then next week on his return.

You are correct that I wrote 'anti-scanning' in an unintentinally misleading manner. I have edited that reference and hope that it is now clear. Thank you for the comment. The reference for the full article is:
http://www.mouthmattersbook.com/mrs...ads/2014/03/Dr.-Wes-ShanklandOpen-Record.docx

Regarding where to get this treatment - the surgeon has asked that I request your email address and he will contact you direct. I am not sure how this website operates, but hopefully we can get in email contact to assist you.

Best wishes, Errol

 

[ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY]

Hi @@ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY

Thanks for your great report, and congratulations on your getting to the core of many of your health problems. Like Hip, I too am interested in some information on how to contact qualified dentists/oral surgeons and/or clinics that do this kind of specialized diagnostics and surgery. My understanding is they're few and far between.

I'd also be interested in what your surgeries cost, and whether or not the expense might be prohibitive for many who've lost their source of income--like myself and many others on this board.
-
You may be interested in a thread I started several years ago entitled:

Diagnosis Unknown - Story of CFS Recovery

It's about a book written by a man who spent years trying to track down the cause of his wife's CFS-like poor health--finally discovering oral infections were the cause. It's quite a fascinating read, with the entire book being available online for anybody to read.

Please keep us updated!

Hi Wayne - thanks for your comment. I am happy to report further that ten days after surgery, I am now as of today free of:

1. The pre-surgery issues of severe and increasing pain of in parts of my teeth, jawbone, left ear, left sinus, left cheek, left eye, left ear and head.

2. All pain caused by the surgery essentially the cutting into the gums to access the jawbone, the jaw bone itself and the teeth where root canals were treated at their top ends high in the jaw bone.

Wonderful feeling, so energising! It is like a miracle.

To your points Wayne:

1. Similary to Hip, please get your email address through to me and I will pass it onto the surgeon. (For the record - I have no commercial interest in this whatsoeve and am only too happy to assist if possible).

2. Costs - the costs were as follows: Maxilo Facial Surgeon, Anaesthetist and Hosipital theatre for 2 hours and day care out patient treatment: All in approximately: South African Rand 30,000 - that equates to around US$2600. If the work was undertaken in the surgeon's own rooms with the Anaesthetist the cost would be around half - plus minus US$1300. The work is undertaken in the Cape Province in South Africa, to the highest standards of medication and care.

Possibly the bigger cost could be to flying to South Africa - but you'd certainly find the medical care and friendly hospitality to be very positive.

Please let me know how we can communicate outside of this channel and I will gladly put you in touch with my surgeon. I do not want to contravene the posting policy here on this fantastic website service, but equally I have been so well healed after so many years that I would like to share the benefit of my experience as widely as possible by introducing the unique surgeon here to those who want to explore their own situations.

 

[Hip]

@ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY

Thanks Errol. Do you think that the sonar device is the Cavitat scanner described on @Ian's website?

Regarding where to get this treatment - the surgeon has asked that I request your email address and he will contact you direct. I am not sure how this website operates, but hopefully we can get in email contact to assist you.

Thanks, but what I had in mind was putting some weblinks to dentists in my ME/CFS Roadmap For Testing And Treatment document, which includes a section on ME/CFS caused by jaw bone infections.

I am not actually interested in this treatment for myself, as I don't appear to have any such jaw bone infections.

 

[Ian]

@Hip how do you know you don't? Most of the general public are walking around with at least 1 or 2 infections

 

[Hip]

@Hip how do you know you don't? Most of the general public are walking around with at least 1 or 2 infections

One can never know these things for sure, but I don't have any facial pain, I don't have pain when I press the various areas around my gums and teeth (from what you said in one of your threads some years ago, I understand that jaw bone cavitations will often produce pain when the gums around them are pressed).

Also, my ME/CFS seemed to have a fairly clearcut trigger from a viral infection. Though I agree, ME/CFS patients could have more than one infection, and I would like to see more research in this area of infections within jaw bone cavitations.

A good list of jaw bone cavitations symptoms is given here.


Certainly if there were a dentist near me that had a Cavitat scanner or diagnostic expertise in jaw bone cavitations, I would probably go for a scan, just to be sure. However, with the controversy that surrounds the Cavitat scanner (a controversy which is detailed in the link Errol provided above) and NICO lesions in general, I think dentists that provide these investigations are unfortunately going to remain few and far between.

 

[Ian]

I never actually had facial pain. But most people are walking around with chronic infections in their jaws. Had impacted wisdom teeth? That bone loss around them is where bacteria have eaten a hole in the bone. Had a root canal? That condensing osteitis around them, means the bone is fighting a chronic infection. Had an abscess? Bone abscesses cause infarctions. Infarctions cause the blood supply to be cut off and the bone dies. The abscess part you can see on x-ray, the dead bone you can't. Most actual cavitations are caused by poor extraction by dentists. Failure to remove the periodontal membrane, failure to remove diseased bone. In all the above cases, the infections are all anaerobic, meaning the result to the body is the same. A lot of cavitations will show up on x-ray. If you can still see the outline of where a tooth was extracted, and it was done years previously, its a cavitation.

Unfortunately dentistry has come up with a whole bunch of stupid names for the cavitation/dead bone problem, such as NICO lesions, ratner bone lesions, cavitational osteonecrosis, etc. None of which are recognised by the rest of medicine, and thus have sort of fallen under the radar. But the disease process is actually a type of avascular necrosis, which can happen to all bones in the body, and is recognised by mainstream medicine. In fact if you apply this label to the problem and use MRI with STIR imaging you can image these problems that x-ray can miss in quite detail, which is something I basically discovered by accident in a desperate attempt to find my problem.

 

[Hip]

I find the fact that jaw bone cavitation infections may cause ME/CFS or ME/CFS symptoms fascinating. Thanks for all your efforts, @Ian, in writing up this material. There seems to be several threads on this forum about ME/CFS and jaw bone infections; see here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Do you know of any other ME/CFS patients who, like yourself, had major improvements in their ME/CFS symptoms after surgery to clear out a jaw bone cavitation infection? Are you still in more-or-less in full remission from ME/CFS after your jaw bone cavitation surgery? I understand from your thread that you were completely housebound with ME/CFS prior to your surgery, and experienced full remission from ME/CFS after the surgery.


I think if jaw bone infections were investigated further, by ME/CFS researchers as well as dentists and maxillofacial surgeons, it may well throw some light on the causes and nature of ME/CFS.

The idea of a local infection causing systemic symptoms is not new; this concept goes under the name of focal infection theory.

My own idea as to why jaw bone infection may cause ME/CFS centers of the trigeminal nerve, which runs deep into the jaw bone, and into the teeth.

One of the function of the trigeminal nerve (and also the vagus nerve) is to trigger the sickness response in the brain when the nerve detects the presence of an infection somewhere in the body. The sickness response creates all the symptoms you feel when you come down with the flu. It's not the influenza infection itself that creates your sickness symptoms; these symptoms are purposely caused by the built-in sickness response of your brain. In other words it's your brain that deliberately makes you feel ill.

In his theory of ME/CFS, Michael VanElzakker point out that sickness response symptoms are very similar to those of ME/CFS, and he thinks ME/CFS may just simply be the chronic activation of the sickness behavior response, due to a chronic infection. His theory could then nicely explain why chronic infections in the jaw bone, which constantly activate the trigeminal nerve, can cause ME/CFS symptoms.

This trigeminal nerve sickness response theory could also explain why bone cavitations from osteonecrosis (avascular necrosis) in bones other than the jaw bone and facial bones do not lead to ME/CFS symptoms — because only the facial bones are innervated by the trigeminal nerve, and so only these can trigger the sickness response symptoms.

According the Wikipedia article on osteonecrosis / avascular necrosis, bone cavitations from osteonecrosis are especially common in the hip joint, and this usually requires hip replacement. But I am not aware of any fatigue symptoms arising from these hip bone cavitations. So this suggests that you may only get ME/CFS symptoms from bone cavitation infections when they are located in bones innervated by the trigeminal nerve, such as the jaw bone.

The Trigeminal Nerve (Yellow) Running Deep Into The Jaw Bone And Teeth

I understand from this article that there are at least three separate mechanisms by which jaw bone cavitations, and their associated infections and inflammation (osteomyelitis), can be created:

• The cavitation arises after a tooth extraction, typically a wisdom tooth extraction, where the periodontal ligament from the tooth was not fully removed, preventing the bone from growing and filling in the hole in the bone left by the extracted tooth.

It says here that: "if the periodontal ligament is not carefully removed from the socket after the extraction, the surrounding bone receives no notification that the tooth is gone. The continued presence of any portion of the ligament gives the biological message to the surrounding jawbone that all is well and no new bone growth is needed."

• The cavitation arises from the process of osteonecrosis — osteonecrosis is the death of bone tissue due to poor blood flow to the bone. If my understanding is correct, I believe cavitations caused by osteonecrosis can occur anywhere in the bone, not just at tooth extraction sites.

• The cavitation arises from traumatic bone cyst. The cause of traumatic bone cysts is not known, though they are sometimes associated with physical trauma. It is interesting to note that ME/CFS is observed to sometimes arise after physical trauma, such as a car accident.

But most people are walking around with chronic infections in their jaws.

It would be interesting to know if ME/CFS patients have higher number of jaw bone cavitations than the general healthy population.

Do you have any references that provide some figures or estimates for the percentage prevalence of chronic jaw bone infections in general population?

A lot of cavitations will show up on x-ray. If you can still see the outline of where a tooth was extracted, and it was done years previously, its a cavitation.

Very interesting.

I never actually had facial pain.

According to this article, common symptoms of jaw bone cavitations are:

Deep bone pain and pressure, which may be constant but vary in intensity
A sour, bitter taste, which often causes gagging and bad breath
Sharp, shooting pain from the jaws, which eludes doctor's diagnostic attempts
Chronic maxillary sinusitis, congestion and pain

Did you have any of these, like say the sour, bitter taste in the mouth?

 

[Hip]

@ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY, you might consider asking the moderators to move your thread to the "General Treatments" section of this forum, where it may get more attention. Threads posted in the "Introduce Yourself" section, as this thread currently is, do not get indexed by Google, so it makes it harder for others to find it. Unless of course you don't want this thread indexed. To contact the moderators, just press the "Report" button under your post.

 

[Ian]

According to this article, common symptoms of jaw bone cavitations are:

Did you have any of these, like say the sour, bitter taste in the mouth?

No I never had any of those. My main symptom was sore throats and lymph node pain in my neck, which was considerably worse on one side.

Although it's true a lot of the general public are wandering around with sometimes many dental infections. A lot of people seem quite resilient to them. When disease shows up it doesn't always show up as chronic fatigue. Many people get heart problems or cancer. In fact a lot of dentists that treat these problems have found a strong correlation between the side of the mouth the infection is, and the side of the body that the the cancer appears, ie in the brain or breast.

With regards to chronic fatigue, it probably depends what strains of bacteria bacteria (or possibly fungi) and how much waste they are producing, that depends if you will get fatigue. There used to be a test you could order that could measure how toxic a root canal was by seeing what critical enzymes in the body it destroyed. It was called TOPAS i think, but it is no longer available.

According the Wikipedia article on osteonecrosis / avascular necrosis, bone cavitations from osteonecrosis are especially common in the hip joint, and this usually requires hip replacement. But I am not aware of any fatigue symptoms arising from these hip bone cavitations.

I am not either, but honestly I've never really looked into it. Maybe those kind of infections are self limiting because if the bone dies in a joint, the joint normally collapses. Not all bone death ends up the same also. In the jaw some cavitations are basically dry, which probably limits what will grow inside of them. Others contain liquified fat and can smell really terrible, those are probably by far the worst kind.

Do you know of any other ME/CFS patients who, like yourself, had major improvements in their ME/CFS symptoms after surgery to clear out a jaw bone cavitation infection? Are you still in more-or-less in full remission from ME/CFS after your jaw bone cavitation surgery? I understand from your thread that you were completely housebound with ME/CFS prior to your surgery, and experienced full remission from ME/CFS after the surgery.

Yes my mum had major health improvements after cavitation surgery. But she also had surigical failure like I did and had to have repeat surgery. And yes other people who have gone through the same as me have had some pretty major health improvements. My own health is pretty good. Towards the latter half of my illness my tonsils became really chronically infected. My left one, the one next to the bone infection, I can only describe it as having a river of pus flowing out of it on a permanent basis. At the time I had pain extending from my neck, that would go right the way down the front of my chest. The cavitation surgery fixed most of that, but the tonsil problem persisted, eventually blowing up 18 months ago, and I had to have it surgically removed, which was one of the most painful things I've ever experienced. I am still quite prone to throat infections now (I probably always will be), but on the whole my health is pretty damn good.

 

[Hip]

And yes other people who have gone through the same as me have had some pretty major health improvements.

What would be nice to have is a series of weblinks to stories about major improvements in ME/CFS symptoms appearing straight after jaw bone cavitation debridement surgery. I think the more evidence that can be gathered for this, the more it might raise the interest of researchers that happen to read these threads.

Perhaps it might be worth looking for testimonial-type accounts on the websites of dentists that undertake jaw bone cavitation debridement surgery. I imagine they must have had ME/CFS patients. I believe many of these dentists or maxillofacial surgeons call themselves biological dentists or holistic dentists.


I did find this paper which had one case study:

Elimination of oral focal infection: a new solution in chronic fatigue syndrome management?

Though that paper was about cleaning up a periodontal oral infection, rather than a jaw bone cavitation infection.

 

[Undisclosed]

Hello @ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY

Welcome to Phoenix Rising.

 

[ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY]

@ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY

Thanks Errol. Do you think that the sonar device is the Cavitat scanner described on @Ian's website?





Thanks, but what I had in mind was putting some weblinks to dentists in my ME/CFS Roadmap For Testing And

@ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY, you might consider asking the moderators to move your thread to the "General Treatments" section of this forum, where it may get more attention. Threads posted in the "Introduce Yourself" section, as this thread currently is, do not get indexed by Google, so it makes it harder for others to find it. Unless of course you don't want this thread indexed. To contact the moderators, just press the "Report" button under your post.

Treatment document, which includes a section on ME/CFS caused by jaw bone infections.

I am not actually interested in this treatment for myself, as I don't appear to have any such jaw bone infections.

OK Hip no problem, I'm having a look at the ME/CFS Roadmap For Testing And Treatment site as we speak and I'll addin what I can.

 

[ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY]

The Scanner used is the KODAK 8000 Digital Panoramic System. The surgeon previously used the Cavitat Generation 4 system, which he showed me - it looks like a very very old PC, with an old style stiff disk reader.

 

[Hip]

The Scanner used is the KODAK 8000 Digital Panoramic System. The surgeon previously used the Cavitat Generation 4 system, which he showed me - it looks like a very very old PC, with an old style stiff disk reader.

Thanks very much Errol. Looks like the KODAK 8000 Digital Panoramic System is an example of a digital panoramic X-ray machine.

Though it says in this article on osteomyelitis of the jawbone that:

Diagnosis is hindered by the fact that X-rays (even digital and/or panoramic) often do not detect dental osteomyelitis.

So I guess from that statement, digital panoramic X-ray machines give the best chance of detecting osteomyelitis, as X-ray machines go, but detection is by no means guaranteed.

 

[ERROL_FARNHAMSURREY]

Hip, sincerely bow to your knowledge in these matters.What I can say is that my Maxillo surgeon is very experienced in reading these sonar scans. He does say that he cannot be 100% right - often until surgery to confirm his interpretation - but he is correct most of the time. Even career long radiographers and radiologists differ on the interpretation of xrays and scans from time to time so it is still part science, part art.

 

[Hip]

Hip, sincerely bow to your knowledge in these matters.

I don't really know that much about this subject, and just used Google to get the above info about how good these digital panoramic X-ray machines are at detecting cavitations in the jaw bone.

I guess as you say, it is down to the skill of the maxillofacial surgeon to interpret the X-ray scans.


I presume that if your maxillofacial surgeon is no longer using the Cavitat scanner, and favors a digital panoramic X-ray, then this X-ray device must be more reliable at detecting jaw bone cavitations.

It does seem strange that, with all the technologies we now have available, no device can 100% reliably detect a hole in the middle of your jaw bone!


Anyway, thanks for your input on this. I am here just to see what I can learn from you.