Enlarged lymph glands
In the majority of cases of neck pain, patients would also have enlarged and painful lymph glands. Lymph nodes are control stages of your immune system that attend nearby infection. In cases of tooth abscess, prolonged infection has probably reached your lymph nodes, and they started creating lymphocytes at an accelerated rate to combat infection. Thus, enlargement of your lymph glands is a normal biological process in immunocompetent patients who are actually responding against the infection.