What does antibiotics do to a dental abscess?

Abscess tooth and antibiotics?please help?

• ive had an abscess tooth for a few months now ivw gone to the dentist been put on antibiotics and am waiting for my insurance to see what teeth they cover because they want to pull my wisdom teeth as well. my prblem is ive been put on amoxcillin 3 times already and feel like it no longer has any affect on my tooth. ive told the dentist this and he was like ok yet still prescribed me the same thing .Now i know this is wrng and should not be done but a friend of mine who previously had an abscess got prescribe cephalexin but before she could even use it again (she had previously taken it )she had her tooth pulled she gave it to me and told me it worked great on her im a little afraid to take it bit am sick and tired of feeling sick ...i would go to another dentist but this is the only place that takes my insurance same as the walk in they will only prescribe me amoxicillin because its what my dentistry has it as my primary medicine...i just want to feel better and my friend told me this would help ..would it be a big deal to take the cephalexin or should i continue the amoxicillin eventhough im immune to it now please advice would help

• Answer:

  I agree with the others. Unless it's your wisdom tooth that's causing the abscess, I would tell the dentist not to worry about the wisdom teeth now and just focus on the tooth that is having the problem. You can tell him you'll consider doing the wisdom teeth later if that gets him off your back, but why complicate an already bad situation with extra, optional procedures? As for the antibiotics, your infection could be resistant to Amoxicillin. But keep in mind that the antibiotic will only help the infection in your mouth and the rest of your body. It won't touch the infection that is in your tooth, so that will remain and continue to re-infect your mouth as long as the tooth remains untreated. So the amoxicillin might have been working, but you've just been getting re-infected quickly. The question is whether it does take care of the infection and the abscess and if it does even temporarily, the med still works. But if you've taken it several times and had no change at all in the infection in the skin, it is probably ineffective and a different medicine should be tried. Don't expect it to cure the tooth. The tooth either needs to come out or get a root canal done to keep this from continuing.