Dental Nerve Damage

Which Nerves Are at Risk

Dental work in the lower jaw runs close to a network of sensory nerves. The three most commonly affected are:

• The inferior alveolar nerve (IAN), which runs through the lower jawbone and supplies feeling to the lower teeth, lower lip, and chin. It is most often at risk during lower wisdom tooth removal and lower implant placement.
• The lingual nerve, which runs along the inner surface of the lower jaw and supplies feeling and taste to the front two-thirds of the tongue. It is most often at risk during lower wisdom tooth extraction.
• The mental nerve, a branch of the IAN that exits near the lower premolars and supplies the chin. It can be affected by implants placed in that area.

Common Symptoms

Nerve injury can cause numbness, tingling, burning, or an electric-shock sensation in the lip, chin, tongue, or cheek. Taste can be affected when the lingual nerve is involved. Symptoms range from mild and temporary to permanent, depending on how the nerve was affected.

How Nerve Injuries Are Graded

Not all nerve injuries are the same. Clinicians generally describe three levels of severity:

• Neuropraxia — mild compression that blocks signals temporarily without damaging the nerve fiber; sensation typically returns within days to weeks.
• Axonotmesis — partial damage to the nerve fiber that requires it to regenerate; recovery can take weeks to months.
• Neurotmesis — the nerve is fully severed or badly damaged; recovery is unlikely without surgical repair, and some loss of sensation may be permanent.

Could It Be Negligence?

Some nerve injuries are a recognized risk of dental procedures and can occur even with careful treatment. Others result from avoidable errors — for example, placing an implant without adequate imaging, drilling past a safe depth, or failing to respond appropriately when a patient reports lasting numbness. Attorneys and dental experts typically look at the imaging taken beforehand, the treatment plan, and how the dentist responded once symptoms were reported.

For more detail on the two procedures most often linked to nerve injury, see our pages on dental implant nerve damage and wisdom tooth nerve damage. If your symptoms started recently and you're not sure what they mean, our numbness after dental work page walks through what's typical and what isn't.