Question:
Just a quick question for the dentists out there. Can dental work cause an
allergic reaction months after the work was done? Can Guta Percha cause an
allergic reaction? Can bonding agents/chemicals used on crowns? Or
anesthesia?
Answer:
Some dental materials in contact with soft tissues (esp. but not
exclusively nickle in casting alloys) can cause persistent contact allergy.
I'm not certain that this constitutes a true allergic reaction, but for the
purposes of this question I doubt tit matters. Gutta percha is well tolerated and quite inert. Some use barium salts in
them to make them look nice on x-ray. I can't categorically say you couldn't
have a reaction, but I've never seen one. Bonding agents can certainly be irritating to soft tissues, and I have
heard of allergic reactions to local anesthetics, especially procaine, which is
rarely used anymore. But these wouldn't occur months later, since they're not
around for more than a couple of hours before they're cleared from the system. I once had a patient who was documented allergic to latex who also tested
allergic to gutta percha. Maybe just an isolated case but the gutta percha
created quite a skin response in this individual. Come to think of it, she
had an endo completed the year before with gutta percha and there was a
chronic infection around the tooth a year later. I've never encountered this, so I'm glad to learn of the possibility. but this could have simply been endodontic failure; not the
manifestation of allergy, you must admit.
