Getting a Dental Filling Next Week :)

[coffee_girl]

So I just got back from a dental cleaning, did it manually with polishing afterwards (I know). My tinnitus did not spike.

I have a filling next week, dentist told me that she will use a numbing injection on my gums... eek! She says the drilling will take 10 minutes.

How will I prepare for my appointment? I never had a filling and the drill didn't seem very loud at all. I don't take meds but should I? Thoughts? Help!

 

[threefirefour]

My dad's a dentist.

One thing you can do is to tell your practitioner to be more careful with the drilling sound, and see if they can give frequent drilling breaks during the process.

Fillings suck, but to prepare I would recommend flossing. In my experience it makes it slightly less painful. You should be fine though.

 

[Luman]

You must take very good care of your teeth.

Millions of people get teeth filled every day, a significant number of them have hearing loss and/or tinnitus, and there's very little risk of further damage. Tell her about your tinnitus, and ask that the drilling be time-adjusted.

If by "meds" you mean a tranquilizer, that's up to you. I have had extensive work on my teeth over my lifetime, and 99% of the time at the dentist I never took anything. Since getting tinnitus, I've had several dental procedures performed, and never had a spike or any other problem.

 

[Bill Bauer]

You can take NAC before and after the procedure. It is supposed to protect the cochlea against the noise. You might even take Prednisone before/after the procedure, for the same reason.

You might want to cancel your upcoming appointment and make a new, longer appointment. It needs to be longer to allow the dentist to drill for 5 seconds followed by 10 second breaks (this triples the drilling time; it used to be possible to find this advice on the American Tinnitus Association's website). You might also want to make sure that the dentist uses that electric-powered drill. Your dentist might own one, but your procedure might be scheduled to take place in a dental chair that is not equipped with one.

 

[coffee_girl]

I just got back from the dentist. She was super sweet and told me to raise my hand if I needed her to stop. I did not want to extend the ordeal so I didn't raise my hand at all. The drilling didn't sound that loud outside but OMG it was ridiculously loud once it was in my mouth and grinding against teeth. I felt like I was standing next to a construction site!

Luckily the whole drilling lasted only a minute, the rest was quiet and easy. I did not spike from the ordeal.

I took NAC the night before just as a "test" to see if it impacts my tinnitus in any way, strangely NAC made my tinnitus go away completely. Yep, no sound, no tinnitus at all... weird. My tinnitus came back this morning though, I took another pill 45 minutes before my dentist appointment, again tinnitus went away.

So conclusion is that I am not spiking, BUT it could be because I am under the influence of NAC and not hearing my tinnitus at all... who knows what will happen once the NAC wears off. We shall see when I go to bed tonight =]

 

[Aquaticon]

You can take NAC before and after the procedure. It is supposed to protect the cochlea against the noise. You might even take Prednisone before/after the procedure, for the same reason.

You might want to cancel your upcoming appointment and make a new, longer appointment. It needs to be longer to allow the dentist to drill for 5 seconds followed by 10 second breaks (this triples the drilling time; it used to be possible to find this advice on the American Tinnitus Association's website). You might also want to make sure that the dentist uses that electric-powered drill. Your dentist might own one, but your procedure might be scheduled to take place in a dental chair that is not equipped with one.

Is it safe to take NAC for wisdom teeth removal? I have an appointment this week, and I've seen some reports that suggest NAC can reduce blood clotting which would obviously negatively impact recovery from having teeth extracted.

 

[Bill Bauer]

Is it safe to take NAC for wisdom teeth removal? I have an appointment this week, and I've seen some reports that suggest NAC can reduce blood clotting which would obviously negatively impact recovery from having teeth extracted.

I believe I took NAC, and ended up being ok. I guess taking it before the procedure and not taking it after the procedure is a possible compromise. But perhaps the information you found implies that it is a good idea to not take NAC before such a procedure.