Infection months after graft material placed.

[sandbar]

I had *graft material* placed in an extraction site to facilitate bone for an implant.  This was done July 23, 2009.  Last month I had a painful lump appear on my inside gum at site of former tooth #11.  I was out of state from where my periodontist is located.  I had a prescription for Clindamycin with me and started taking that on the second day.  The lump ruptured and drained.  Returning home on the fifth day after beginning the antibiotic, I went to my periodontist for an assessment. An x-ray was made and the dentist said he could see nothing at all.  Looking in my mouth at the rupture site, he couldn't see that either. He told me to finish the antibiotic and wait to see if it happened again.  He gave me a prescription for Keflex for "just in case".

On, Friday (dentist office closed), May 21, 2010, the same scenario occurred.  A few days beforehand, I have a sore eye socket and pain running towards my ear.  My vision is blurry, too.  Within 16 hours of the onset of the gum pain the lump had appeared and ruptured on the outside of my gum rather than the inside.  Monday, May 24, 2010 I went to my periodontist.  He said he couldn't see anything and didn't think an x-ray would reveal anything.  I told him about my eye and ear pain and he told me to finish the antibiotic and make an appointment to come back.  The first available was a month away.  Before I left the reception area, he told me to come back to the office in thirty minutes and he would open it up.

He opened up the site and placed something in the opening and made an x-ray.  He worked away for almost an hour removing infection and bone.  There was difficulty getting the site deadened so it was a fairly traumatic experience.  More *graft material* was placed to fill the void, but he said there would be a defect.  Indentation?

I have a two week follow-up appointment.

Nine days after the procedure, the bone under my eye is still tender to the touch and my eye socket aches when I blink.  The BIG QUESTION: How do I know if all of the infection is gone?  Evidently, it was there for nine months and just continued to get worse without my knowledge.  

[sandbar]

I'm confused by the response to my query concerning bone graft material placed in my jawbone, not an aortic bypass.

This question is; how do I know if all of the infection has been removed by the removal of infected bone and scraping to clean out the site?

Are you saying that a CT scan is the appropriate follow-up for this procedure?

[SandyChelsey]

Prosthetic graft infections are an uncommon impediment of aortic bypass. These infections may have serious sequel such as limb loss and can be lethal. They are hard to eliminate and, under certain circumstances, tricky to diagnose. Usually, computed tomography (CT) is the most efficacious imaging method for diagnosis of graft infections due to its quick.