Hi, I hope I am picking the correct forum to post this. A good friend of mine has had an ongoing problem with her upper left wisdom tooth extraction site and her left sinuses. When she had her wisdoms extracted, her upper left became painful and she said the oral surgeon gave her an antibiotics prescrip and told her to lightly gargle with saltwater while she was taking the antibiotics. She followed the surgeons orders and upon gargling, the salt water began to run out of her left nostril like a faucet that is turned on full force. She said that she called the surgeon and he got edgy with her and only told her to stop gargling with the saltwater and let it heal up. She said that after a week or two the pain went away but about 6 or so months after that she began getting horrible migraine headaches and sinus pain. She said she forgot about the complication she had had with her upper left extraction at the time and failed to mention it to her MD. When she went to her MD, he told her it was probably allergies or a sinus infection so he gave her antibiotics and allergy meds to take. I guess neither helped so she told the MD so throughout the next several years he began trying her on different antibiotics and allergy meds. He also had her get an MRI done because at one point she was getting numbness and tingling on the left side of her head and her left cheek bone, in particular, along with the severe pain that had gotten worse since first going to the MD. Multiple Sclerosis, Trigeminal Neuralgia and Cancer were all ruled out. She just ended up deciding to live with it. The pain would come and go. It would be excruciating pain for a few days, then the pain would disappear altogether for a few weeks before coming back again with a vengeance. Now, several years later, she is now in horrible pain almost everyday, nonstop and she said that she feels warmth over her left cheekbone. The gum area where the wisdom tooth had been extracted is tender to the touch, she gets pains in her lower left sinus area, right below the cheek bone. She has worked with the ent specialist in the past and the only thing he sees wrong is a slight deviated septum, which, he didn't think was the true cause of all the pain she was having. Now, when she gets the pain she complains of feeling sick to her stomach and she is tired ALL the time. And what's worse is that her left cheekbone sticks out a full 1/4 inch further than her right cheek bone!! I am so scared for her. Could this be an underlying infection that has spread to the bone? If so, what would be her next step, as in, what type of specialist should she go to for this? What types of tests or x-rays should she be getting? If I posted this in the wrong forum, please feel free to direct me to the appropriate forum so I can repost it. Thanks so much.
 

Sounds like a "sinus perforation". It is fairly common.

She needs to go a GOOD oral surgeon. The infection should be cleaned out of the pocket and then the sinus perforation patched up.

If IS trigeminal neuralgia pain..........ask the oral surgeon to do a debridement also, many times this will clear up the pain, infection, and swelling. This is called cavitational surgery that only about 5% of oral surgeons and 1% of dentists do.

X-rays probably won't show anything.......she will probably have to just tough it and go in for this type of exploratory surgery.....that is what her gut instinct is telling her anyway. Get a consultation with an oral surgeon that does debridement and sinus perforation surgery, you have to look around because maybe only one or two oral surgeons in each major city in the US do these procedures. She went to a bad oral surgeon last time, this time she needs one of the very best to fix it.