I have severe dental pain due to a condition I inherited which means I have very little enamel on my teeth. All of the nerves in my back teeth constantly throb with pain. I have had several root canals done, and I am having ongoing treatment. I saw my doctor this week to discuss pain meds. He has put me on 30mg of pure codeine up to 4xdaily. He said he can increase that dosage when I next see him or change me to a stronger pain med. I was just wondering what is the best pain med for severe dental pain. Paracetmol and Ibuprofen do nothing for my level of pain.

Dental pain is one of the worst. When I try to describe to my friends what nerve pain is like, I often use dental pain as an example.

Best med, that is a tough question as everyone is different. I would think after codeine, the next stronger med is vicoden, 5/500s. 5mgs of hydro/500 mgs of APAP.

But I would ask for something stronger as the current meds don't work and see what your dentists suggests. Most docs don't like it when one asks for specific meds.

Pure codeine is'nt going to much without tylenol. The tylenol potentiates the narcotic. Have you tried taking the ibuprofen along with the codeine? In the US most dentists prescribe 800 mg ibuprofen and vicodin together.

Thanks for your responses. It's hard to desribe how agonising severe dental pain can be. I used to take paracetemol with 60mg codeine when my teeth were painful. Due to moving house, I have recently changed my doctor, so I have had to start all over again with pain meds, and trying to describe to him the level of pain I am in sometimes. All of my back teeth have huge fillings and the fillings are reacting to the nerves sending the most awful nerve pain up into my head. Complete nerve extraction is an option in long-term, but my dentist says it will shorten the life of my teeth. The codeine does help for daily pain maintenance, but it would be good to have something stronger on hand for when the pain becomes unbearable. I have never taken anything stronger than codeine for the pain.

for a normal tooth pain I've noticed ibuprofen seems to help me. but for a severe dental problem/pain I'd think you'd get hydrocodone 7.5mg.

be careful about the apap is all but yeah vics es are good its the just apap i dont like 750 or whatever

id rather do lortab or at least 2 percs + 650 apap is prolly 2 times stronger than vic es

the 7.5 +500 or the 10 +500 are alot better. course 2 percs 5mg with 325 is the best

I was just telling him what he's likely to get, but I could be wrong because I've never seen anyone walk away from a dentist with codeine. everyone I've seen has come back with hydrocodone 7.5, or 800mg ibuprofen.

Most Dentists do go with hydro 7.5/500 or 10/500 in most cases.

wow, I've never seen someone get 10s from dental work. maybe if its something real serious. but like Captain just said. normally its the 7.5mg.

i have always thought that ibu along with an antibiotic worked better on dental pain than any CII or CIII. dont get me wrong, i would rather get some hydro scripted. but dental pain is hard to get rid of even with pk's. you need something that works with swelling too.

JMO...

yep, I've always had good results with ibuprofen and a standard tooth pain. I currently have two broken teeth that I need to have something done with. I would ask for the hydrocodone/ibuprofen preparation.

Thats where vicoprofen actually came from/. the dental industry. tylenol does crap for intense nerve pain. the hydro or other strong narcotic is best for that,. But for the swelling from extractions or oral surgery, implants,inflamation get Ibuprofen and VICOPROFEN if at all possible,.

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can anyone tell me the bad things about taking large doses of ibuprofen? like how acetaminophen, can cause liver damage from large doses, or large doses over time.

Large does of Ibu....800mg is what you have to take for anti-inflamitory effect.

each 8 hours. keep ant-acid handy. they DO cause heartburn at that dose but do no real harm.

The IBU will work just about as good as a narcotic pain pill. the nerve pain in the jaw or cheek is so much bone pain that IBU just has a better effect there,.

try 600mg at first then if you need it, take that extra 200mg.

I had ALL kinds of dental surgery done and IBU and ICE was the 2 most important items. the broken jaw/cheek got me demerol but that was more to stay quiet and still.

I always take 800mg of it. I get the equate generic kind of the 200mg and take 4 of them.

I was prescribed 10/500 once after having a wisdom tooth removed.

I 've seen a couple others get the same dose too,but the rest were 7.5's.

broken jaw, break jaw to re-align, remove multiple wisdoms, much construction for implanting,then the gas comes out and the pills, thats a pretty nice experience till you wake up! !

ohhh yes, the classic DRY SOCKET that is responsible for more dental suicides that the tooth that was there is.

Imagine a HOLE in the gums that gets wider and deeper.
at the worst, mine was 1/4" deep and had opened up as much as half again across.
looking down into the crater....you see the white material in the bottom., that is your tooth. it's supposed to have a film of tissue over the bone at all times, but the trauma of nearby surgery will tear everything away and expose the bone. Bone cannot feel. but its loaded with nerves. znot like a brok;en bone, not like a broken nose either. it just hurts, bleeds, swells and will distract every move you make until its gone. everyday the open hole is there invites infection because the human mouth is just 2nd place from a dog for dirty mouth, so germs and all kind of nasty stuff reside in there.
2 nurses that I saw develeped the same throat infection that this dry socket patient was carrying around.

I'd rather be beat naked with banana skins & a barbed wire before I went to play with that injury. seriously, as simple as it is, its as near deadly as a gunshot wound. and as painful.

Every time I had a serious dental procedure or surgery done they prescribed me demerol. This was from different dentists and oral surgeons. I figured it was just the status quo for dental procedures. The one time I had some minor pain though, it was 10/500.

So just to confirm, what is the maximum dose of Ibuprofen you can take in one single dose, 800mg? I always thought it was 400mg, at least that's what it says on OTC Ibuprofen. I can get Ibuprofen and Codeine OTC here in the UK (Nurofen Plus). Each pill contains 200mg Ibuprofen and 12.8mg Codeine. I might try taking four of them if it's safe to do that. I don't want to be taking Ibuprofen or Paracetamol on a daily basis because of it causing long term damage. I think that is why my Dr prescribed me just Codeine on its own.

7.5 vics do the trick

I'm lucky my Dentist is great when it comes to pain.. He always asks what works for me and will prescribe it depending on my pain.. usually it's Lortab 10 or Percocet 10..

hayek, prescription strength ibuprofen comes in doses of 400mg, 600mg, and mostly 800mg. they do not sell 800mg OTC.

also, louis, thats kind of a big jump from lortab 10s, to perc 10's. I would think it'd be something like lortab 10's, or perc 5, or 7.5.

the same milligram of percocet is almost double the strength of hydrocodone.

It depends. My dentist generally gives Lortab 10. Now he will give me Demerol because he knows I take Lortab for my headaches. He used to be pharmacist before a dentist and he says that my body is used to the Lortab so I need something stronger if he has to give me something.

funky, it really depends on the issue.

If you have an abscess the antibiotic will help the pain, but it will take 24-72 hours. The reason that helps is it calms down the infection. As far as ibupofen helping the pain the first couple of days of an abscess, it never did me.

My dentist gave me antibiotics to take and a CII to take for the first 3 days or less.

Now the pain med does NOT stop that pain during those first few days. I don't think you can really stop pain from an abscess, but it made it tolerable.

My dentist always prescribes me vicodin and tells me to take 2 advil at the same time. A couple times when I've had a bad infection, he gave me antibiotics too.

IBU does to the kidneys what APAP does to the liver. So to much can cause issues with the kidneys. I think it can cause stomach and intestinal bleeding if taken in excess for a long period. So IBU is not that much safer than APAP when it comes to taking it often and in larger amounts. I never understood why someone would pay for a prescription of the 800's when you can get a bottle of 1-200 count of the 200 mg OTC cheaper than 10-12 of the 800mg horse pills.

thats what any sane person would do. unless the ibu800 is on the $4 list at wal-mart, and I"m sure it is.

I just saw my PCP today and asked her if vicopren (w/IBU not APAP) would be a better choice for me as there are times during the month she has advised to take large doses of advil.

She said that as I have been having some problems w/nausea, she would rather only have me take the IBU as/when she recommended, due to how hard it is on the stomach. She said if I was in pain and feeling nauseous, she did not want me to have to ingest IBU in order to get the pain killer.

She felt standard vicodin (w/the APAP) was a better choice for me.

Of course I do have yearly tests done on my liver and kidneys and try to drink plenty of water.

how about asking her to switch you to one of the oxycodone only preparations (roxi), at an equivalent dose to your current hydrocodone. this would solve the problem of taking too much apap, and still leave you able to take the ibu when you needed to.

I just think that would solve your entire problem, and maybe if you explain all this to the doc they'll understand it too.