Can a Tooth Abscess Cause a Sore Throat? What It Really Means

How an abscess can reach your throat

An abscess is a pocket of infection at the tip of a tooth root or in the gum beside it. Most stay close to the tooth. The back teeth are different, because they sit near the tissues that lead down into the throat and neck. There are four realistic routes:

• Drainage. An abscess that is leaking into the mouth sends a salty, bitter fluid toward the back of the tongue. You swallow it, and the throat feels scratchy and raw, usually worse in the morning.
• Gum infection around a wisdom tooth. A flap of gum over a partly erupted wisdom tooth can become infected (pericoronitis). It often hurts on swallowing and can look like tonsillitis. We cover it in pericoronitis and wisdom tooth gum infection.
• Swollen glands. The glands under the jaw and along the neck react to a dental infection and can make swallowing uncomfortable. See tooth abscess and swollen lymph nodes.
• Spread into the deeper spaces of the neck. This is uncommon, and it is the one that matters.

When a sore throat plus a sore tooth means hospital

Go to an emergency room, and do not stop at a dental clinic first, if the throat comes with any of these:

• Trouble swallowing saliva, or drooling because swallowing hurts too much
• Any difficulty breathing, or a muffled, hot-potato voice
• Being unable to open your mouth more than a finger's width
• Swelling under the jaw or down the front of the neck
• A high fever, chills or a racing heart

Those signs mean the infection may be moving into the spaces that can narrow the airway. It is rare. It is also the reason this question is worth asking. Our post on when a dental infection is a hospital emergency sets out the full list, and the American Dental Association's page on abscessed teeth agrees on the warning signs.

When it is probably not the tooth

Plenty of sore throats have nothing to do with teeth. A sore throat that arrived with a blocked nose, a cough or a fever of its own is far more likely to be a virus. Strep throat is also common, and a doctor, not a dentist, should check that. We said much the same in going to the dentist with a sore throat.

A throat that is red on both sides and a tooth that does not hurt to tap or bite are reasonable signs that the two are unrelated. If the tooth is quiet, see a doctor about the throat. If the tooth is throbbing, one-sided or swollen, the tooth is where we start.

What we do about a throat that comes from a tooth

We look in the mouth, take an X-ray and test the tooth to find where the infection is coming from. A sore throat that is genuinely dental clears when the source is dealt with, not before. That means a root canal to clean out the infected pulp (the nerve inside the tooth) and keep the tooth, or an extraction when it cannot be saved, as explained in what a tooth abscess is and how it is treated.

Throat lozenges and salt-water rinses will make you feel better for an hour. They do not touch the abscess. Antibiotics are sometimes added, but on their own they do not clear a dead tooth from the inside, and if the pain eases for a few days it is easy to assume the problem has gone. Can a tooth abscess make you sick covers the other whole-body signs worth knowing.

A sore throat and a bad tooth in Beit Shemesh, on a Friday

Our clinic at Harav Kook 28/1 is open Sunday to Thursday 8:00 to 20:00 and Friday 9:00 to 17:00, and Shabbat is for genuine emergencies only. A scratchy throat and a throbbing molar on Friday afternoon is a different problem from the same pair on Sunday, because the weekend is long and an infection does not observe it.

If you are otherwise well and the tooth is the likely cause, call us. We offer same-day appointments through our tooth abscess treatment in Beit Shemesh and our emergency dentist, and Dr. Joel treats in Hebrew and English, so you can describe exactly where it hurts and when it started. If any warning sign above is present, the hospital comes first. Our American Association of Endodontists patient pages are a useful second source on infected teeth.

The short version: a sore throat can come from an abscess, mostly in a back tooth, but it is often unrelated, and trouble swallowing or breathing is a hospital matter. For a sore tooth that needs looking at, call or WhatsApp our Beit Shemesh clinic on 055-985-8845.