Pathological root resorption as a possible intrusive injury of a deciduous mandibular second molar – A unique clinical vignette

Abstract

A primary teeth and its permanent tooth germ are most of the time seen as an inter-dependent units, where each one of them interacts with and depends on each other. Intrusive injury is a most common type of an injury to primary dentition and requires a pediatric dentist to carefully examine not only the damaged tooth, but possible sequelae to the permanent tooth germ. Alteration in eruption and / or in development, as a consequence of inflammation / infection of the preceding primary teeth, such as: hypoplasia, morphological alteration on the dental crown or total arrest of radicular formation. The response of the dento-alveolar apparatus to infection is characterized by inflammation which may result in tooth resorption. This may be a consequence of infective endodontic pathosis alone or superimposed on trauma induced resorption. These infection induced resoprtions, which are generally termed inflammatory root resorptions, may occur as internal resorptions, external resorptions or combined internal - external lesions. This manuscript will present a rare case of a primary tooth onto its permanent tooth bud that showed one such case scenario of a pathological root resorption of primary teeth following a posssible intrusive injury. The condition analysed in this study belong to a patient who visited our Children's Dentistry Clinic. These conditions are often overlooked by parents mainly because less attention is given to the primary dentition and to the child’s inability to cope with the situation. The earlier this kind of condition is diagnosed, the less would be the destructive effects and the consequences on the permanent germ unit. Keywords: Anatomic proximity, Intrusive injury, Inflammatory root resorption, Pathological root resorption, Space regainer.