Dr. Noah's Dentistry Blog

Questions About Dentistry Answered

Archives for January 2019

Dentist Won’t Fix Crown

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I don’t know what to do. I’ve had massive trouble with a dental crown I had placed less than xix months ago. My dentist adjusted them three times. Nothing he did helped. The crown still hurt like mad every single time I bit down. Now he’s saying there’s nothing wrong. Well, last night I was eating at a restaurant and it broke. I called him and he feels he’s done enough and says I must have done something. He said he’s willing to make a new one, but I’ll have to pay for it. Even if I felt that was fair, I don’t trust him to get it right any better than he did last time. What do you recommend?

Marla

Dear Marla,

Tulsa Emergency Dentist

You have been through the ringer with this, not to mention your dentist is being unfair. It will be fairly easy for you to get a refund for this crown regardless of how your dentist feels. He hasn’t met even the minimum standard for the lifetime of a dental crown.

However, you’ve got to get this problem taken care of. Because you can’t trust your dentist and you’ve been handed a time sensitive situation, I’m going to recommend you look up dentists who treat emergencies in your area. It shouldn’t be too hard to find one. Many of them will use the search term “emergency dentist”.

The Possible Problem with Your Dental Crown

When your crown gives you pain upon biting down there is usually one of two reasons.

The first possibility is a lingering infection. While most of the time an infection is dealt with by a root canal treatment, there are some tricky canals in there and it’s possible one was missed. An x-ray should reveal that. If your dentist didn’t do an x-ray, the emergency dentist will as a standard procedure.

Another possibility is the crown is seated too high. You said he tried adjusting it three times. While that’s good, when it wasn’t making a difference he should have kept investigating the problem.

I think this is the most likely issue with your crown. The reason I say that is it broke when you bit down.

While our biting forces are quite hard, they’re usually spread over all out back teeth. If you have a crown seated too high, your bite will hit that and only that with its full force. That type of force on a single crown will make it vulnerable to breaking.

This blog is brought to you by Tulsa Dentist Dr. Ryan Noah.

Dentist Advertised as Affordable to Practice on Patients

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I’m a little worried. Part of me is like, “This is my own fault”, and the other part of me thinks the dentist should have done better. I needed a dental crown, but had been putting it off because of the cost. Fast forward to last week. I received an ad by email about a local dentist. He’d just invested in some crown machine and wanted to get some extra practice on it so he was running a special on dental crowns. It sounded like an inexpensive way to get my crown so I jumped on it. First, the appointment took FOREVER. I was in the chair for more than half the day. I would say close to five hours. He kept going back and working on it. I’m a few days past this treatment and my tooth is super sore. Is this normal or could the “affordable” dentist have damaged the tooth?

Laura

Dear Laura,

porcelain crown being placed on prepared tooth
A cheap crown and an affordable crown aren’t the same thing.

There are three possibilities going on here. The first is normal soreness. Your tooth was messed with for quite some time. It’s normal for the tissue around it to be worn out from that and a little swollen. Take some ibuprofen and give it a couple of days. If the swelling and soreness hasn’t gone down then it is time to be seen again.

That leads me to the two other possibilities:

  • You could have an infection.
  • You could have some tooth trauma.

When Affordable Dental Care Goes Wrong

We’ll start with the infection, because it wouldn’t be the dentist’s fault. You mentioned you’d needed a dental crown but put it off because of cost. It is quite likely your decay spread during your procrastination. This could mean it reached the pulp. If that happened, you now have an infection and need a root canal treatment.

You won’t want to put this off because it is considered a dental emergency. The infection will spread, causing wide spread problems and increasing the cost of repairs significantly. The sooner this is looked at, the better.

The final possibility is the tooth suffered some trauma during the extended procedure. It would be hard to prove, if this were the case, but an honest dentist would want to know and fix any problems he or she caused.

Going into it, this dentist was upfront with you that he was practicing. Whenever someone is new to a procedure or method, it does take them longer. Muscle memory takes time to develop.

If you run into this situation again where you need work but don’t have money, look up affordable dentists on the internet. Many of them will be willing to do the work right away but work with you on payment plan options.

This blog is brought to you by Tulsa Dentist Dr. Ryan Noah.