“Half My Tongue Is Still Numb”: Lingual and Inferior Alveolar Nerve Damage After Dental Work

Dental and facial nerve injury · 13 min read · Updated November 2026 · Reviewed November 2026 · Next review May 2027

By Dr Rosemary Listing, PhD (Law) · Medical negligence specialist, in practice since 2014 · Of Counsel, Peter Evans & Associates

If your tongue, lip or chin still feels numb, burnt or “wrong” after dental work, you are not imagining it, and you are not being difficult by asking questions. Many of these injuries do recover. But some don’t, and the people who come to me most often are the ones who were told to wait, and waited.

This guide brings together what we previously covered in separate articles on wisdom tooth nerve damage and permanent nerve damage after dental surgery. It’s part of our guide to oral, maxillofacial and dental negligence. If your numbness followed jaw surgery, read numbness after jaw surgery instead.

Start with your question

• Which nerves get injured, and how?
• How common is permanent damage?
• Why does timing matter so much?
• How long should I wait?
• When should I see a nerve specialist?
• When is it negligence?

Two nerves, and how they get injured

These nerves can be injured by:

• Lower wisdom tooth removal, especially when the tooth is deeply impacted or sits close to the nerve canal, or when instruments or cuts are on the tongue side.
• Dental implants placed too deep, into or onto the nerve canal.
• Root canal treatment, when material is pushed beyond the tooth root into the canal.
• Local anaesthetic injections, which can very rarely injure either nerve, even when given correctly.

How common is lasting damage?

A systematic review of over 44,000 lower wisdom tooth extractions found that about 1.2% of patients had temporary lip and chin numbness and about 0.28% had permanent numbness. The risk was higher when the tooth was deeply impacted, touched the nerve canal on imaging, or the nerve was exposed during surgery, and it varied with technique and the surgeon’s experience.¹

Source: Kang, Sah and Fei, J Stomatol Oral Maxillofac Surg 2020.¹

For the lingual nerve, most injuries after wisdom tooth surgery are temporary, with around 90% settling within about 8 to 10 weeks.² Injuries caused by implants and root canal treatment are different: specialists describe them as mainly permanent, unless they are dealt with very quickly.³

Why timing matters

With some nerve injuries, what happens early can change the outcome:

• Implants. Where an implant is pressing on the nerve, a nerve injury specialist has recommended removing it within about 30 hours, as early removal may help recovery, though the evidence is limited.² In one study of patients with implant-related nerve injury, most weren’t referred to a specialist clinic until more than six months after surgery.⁴
• Root canal treatment. Material pushed into the nerve canal may also need early removal.³
• Lingual nerve. If a lingual injury isn’t recovering, early assessment allows a decision about surgical repair, which may give better results when done within about six months.⁵

After about three months, longer-lasting changes can develop in the nervous system that are less likely to respond to surgery.³ That is why “wait and see” for many months can matter.

What recovery usually looks like

Recovery is often gradual: patchy return of feeling, tingling or “pins and needles”, then improvement. Tingling can be a good sign. Burning, electric or shooting pain is different, and may mean a painful nerve injury that needs specialist care.

Questions to ask

• Can you test and record exactly where I have feeling, so we can compare next time?
• Which nerve do you think is affected, and how?
• Does anything need to be done now, such as removing an implant or root filling material?
• When will you refer me to someone who specialises in nerve injuries?

Referral to a nerve injury specialist

If numbness is complete, painful, follows an implant or root canal, or isn’t clearly improving within the first weeks, it’s reasonable to ask for referral to an oral and maxillofacial surgeon with an interest in nerve injuries. Ask early. A specialist can always tell you it’s fine to wait; they can’t turn back time if the referral comes too late.

Expected, worth a review, or urgent

What to look for in the records

Your records often tell the story that nobody told you. Our guide to getting your medical records explains how to ask.

How the law looks at it

Nerve injury is a recognised risk of these procedures, so the fact that it happened is not, on its own, negligence. The questions are usually about planning, warning, technique and follow-up.

Were you warned? The risk of nerve injury, and that it can be permanent, is the kind of information a reasonable patient would want before agreeing (Rogers v Whitaker).⁷ In NSW, what other dentists would have said is not a defence to a failure to warn (section 5P of the Civil Liability Act 2002 (NSW)).⁸

Was it planned and done with reasonable care? Experts may look at whether imaging showed the nerve’s position, whether a CT or CBCT scan or a specialist referral was appropriate, and how the procedure was done. That is judged against widely accepted practice at the time (section 5O).⁹

Was it followed up? If you reported numbness or pain and nothing was done, or referral was delayed, it has to be shown that earlier action would probably have led to a better outcome (Tabet v Gett).¹⁰ For implant and root canal injuries, where timing can matter within hours or days, this question can be important.

Who can claim, and when

In NSW, time usually runs from when you knew, or ought to have known, enough to claim, not from the treatment itself, and nerve injuries are often watched for months before anyone says they are permanent.¹¹ See time limits in NSW and how a claim works.

What I see in practice

The most common thing I hear in these cases isn’t “they injured my nerve”. It’s “I told them, and they told me to wait”. The records often show the first phone call, the reassurance, and then a long gap. In implant cases especially, that gap can be the most important part of the story.

Both things can be true

Your dentist may have been kind and careful, and the injury may still have been handled too slowly. Nerve injury can be a known risk, and you can still have been owed a clearer warning or a faster referral. Both are allowed.

Support

• Lifeline, 24-hour crisis support: 13 11 14
• Beyond Blue, anxiety and depression support: 1300 22 4636
• healthdirect, 24-hour nurse advice: 1800 022 222

The woman in the stories now tells everyone she knows who is having a wisdom tooth out to ask one question first: “How close is it to the nerve, and how do you know?”

With care,
Rosemary

Frequently asked questions