It usually takes 10 to 15 days for a tooth abscess to heal. However, how long it takes to heal a tooth abscess depends on the severity of the abscess and the treatment you received for it. Regardless of how your tooth abscess was treated, you should protect your mouth. Duration of an untreated abscess Before trying to answer how long an untreated abscess lasts, we should try to analyze the viability of keeping the abscess untreated from the beginning.
To begin with, a tooth abscess doesn't go away or die on its own, and professional intervention is crucial to treating a dental abscess. If a person doesn't treat a tooth abscess in its early stage, the infection can last for 5 to 12 months or even longer. In addition, if no treatment is applied to the condition, the precious dental pulp will die and you may have another abscess. Similarly, an abscess can cut through the bone and appear in several places.
The wound created by the abscess may take 1 to 2 weeks to fully heal. This depends on the size of the abscess and how well the body responds to the incision and drainage procedure. For the two weeks after the procedure, we expect the tissue at the margins of the wound to heal toward the center, sealing the wound little by little. When a tooth abscess isn't treated for weeks or months, it can spread to other areas, such as the jaw, neck, and brain.
A physical exam is important, but the best way for your dentist to find a dental abscess is to take full dental x-rays. However, you will likely feel dental pain in your tooth due to the cavity before it turns into an abscess.