The main types of dental abscess are: The pain is continuous and may be described as extreme, growing, sharp, shooting, or throbbing.

In some cases, a tooth abscess may perforate bone and start draining into the surrounding tissues creating local facial swelling.

[2] If left untreated, a severe tooth abscess may become large enough to perforate bone and extend into the soft tissue eventually becoming osteomyelitis and cellulitis respectively.

Severe complications requiring immediate hospitalization include Ludwig's angina, which is a combination of growing infection and cellulitis which closes the airway space causing suffocation in extreme cases.

Depending on the severity of the infection, the sufferer may feel only mildly ill, or may in extreme cases require hospital care.

This can include treatment with antibiotics[5] and drainage, however, it has become widely recommended that dentists should improve the antibiotic prescribing practices, by limiting the prescriptions to the acute cases that suffer from the severe signs of spreading infection,[6][7] in an attempt to overcome the development of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains in the population.

There is no clear evidence to rule out if patients with acute dental abscesses can benefit from systemic antibiotic prescriptions.