Lingual Nerve Injury and Alveolar Nerve Injury
It’s one of the most unpleasant experiences for any Atlantan, but a visit to the dentist can actually seriously impact your life in ways you may not have anticipated. Lingual nerve injury and alveolar nerve injury can leave a person with permanent numbness, loss of sensation, or even pain. There’s very little known about these injuries, and it's only patients who suffer a severed lingual nerve or a alveolar nerve injury who understand the impact of these injuries.
These nerve injuries can result from a number of factors. Severance can occur in either the lingual nerve or the alveolar nerve.
When the alveolar nerve is injured, the patient may suffer from numbness and lack of feeling in the lips, as well as the inner part of the mouth. Alveolar nerve injuries are more common than Lingual nerve injuries. Typically, Alveolar nerve injuries are caused by dental aesthetic injections and during wisdom tooth extractions.
Lingual nerve injuries, on the other hand, typically result in numbness of the tongue, tingling sensation, severe pain or burning sensation in the inside of the mouth. Sometimes, there may be a single symptom like numbness or pain, and sometimes, there may be a combination of numbness and pain. The risk of a lingual nerve injury is higher when it's a wisdom tooth that's being extracted. Lingual nerve injury can also occur when a dentist injects a dental anesthetic just before placing fillings and crowns. A patient may also have a higher risk of a Lingual nerve injury during a root canal, tooth extractions and dental implantation.
Approximately 85% of lingual nerve injuries are believed to heal on their own. However, as an Atlanta dental malpractice lawyer who frequently meets with patients suffering from these injuries, I know that dentists often assure patients that the injury will heal on its own. It's important to understand that there's not much that is known about these injuries and their treatment. Therapies for both lingual nerve injuries and alveolar nerve injuries are extremely limited at this point in time.
