Expert: Tony Appleton BDS DPDS - 2/12/2009

Question
I had a large filling and my dentist said it was cracked, so my dentist suggested a crown.
He did the prep, and set a temporary crown until the permanent was being made.  While with the temporary crown I complained about pain on the tooth when biting down..The dentist response, the temporary crown is just too high! He went on with the positioning the permanent crown on, ajust the bite and send me home…
I came back complaining that I still have the pain on the same tooth. OH! Then you need a root canal!! He said.
My question is: Shouldn’t he figure that out before putting the permanent crown in?
Is this lack of experience on his part? After that I found out that he graduate in 2005...
So now he went on and performed the root canal over the crown, leaving the filling seeing on the crown… I did not know that was the way to do things and when I asked on my next visit if the dark spot on the crown would even out, since I thought the purpose of the crown is to cover the filling…his response was, the purpose of the crown is because you had a very large filling!!!

Ok, now more than a month past and I started having pain on the same crown…Went back to him, and his proposition is take the antibiotic for 7 days and wait a month to see if, the antibiotic take care of the infection the he sees on the x-ray, if stop the pain we are done but if the pain continues, he will go back in and thru the same hole re-do the root canal. Wouldn’t that week the crown and give me less life on the crown?
Can I request that he do-over the crown? Do I have the right giving the whole scenario?
Please advice, my husband lost his job in December and now we do not have dental insurance anymore, and this doctor did one previous root canal and then crown on another teeth and I did not had a problem with it.
At the same time health come first and I honestly want to see what another dentist thinks.
I appreciate your response.
Alessandra


Answer
Hi

Ideally your dentist would have recognised root canal needed doing prior to fitting the crown.  If the tooth doesn't settle the root canal work will need redoing, and I would have thought it reasonable to ask for the crown to be changed.

Regards

Tony Appleton