Will He Lose This Tooth?

I had an accident which caused me to lose half of a front tooth. The dentist where I was (I was on vacation) did a root canal treatment and told me to get a crown on it when I got home. I pretty much went home right away because I was in a lot of pain from the accident. My dentist looked everything over and said it looked good. Then he started everything for the crown. Everything was fine for a couple of years, but then the tooth started hurting again. I went back to my dentist. He did x-rays and tapped on it but didn’t see anything. He arranged for me to see an endodontist. He also didn’t see anything and suggested that the pain was actually from the tooth next to it. He thought maybe I was putting pressure on that tooth without realizing it in my sleep. The pain is pretty much gone now and I’m so worried they are missing something and that I’m going to end up losing this tooth.

Melissa

Dear Melissa,

When a root canal treatment is done on a back tooth it is possible for a dentist to miss a canal. Back teeth have multiple roots and some of them can be a bit tricky. A front tooth is different. If they did a root canal treatment on it and you had two different dentists and one endodontist say they did, then that tooth will not have pain. So, I agree (in part) with the endodontist that your front tooth with the crown on it is not the problem. It is probably the tooth next to it. The adjacent tooth. However, that may not be for the reason he stated.

You had pretty severe trauma to your front tooth, which caused you to lose half of it. when that happens, it is highly unlikely that the adjacent tooth will get off unscathed. Often when things like this happen, there is trauma to more than one tooth, but in some of the teeth it does not show up right away. It is fairly common for it to take a year or more for it to show up.

Because the pain is almost gone, then one of two things has happened. Either the tooth has recovered, or the tooth is dead or dying. This is not a dental emergency, but I would keep an eye on it and have x-rays every year. If it ends up showing a problem on an x-ray eventually, then you will need a root canal treatment in that tooth as well.

This blog is brought to you by San Antonio Endodontist Dr. Scott Janse.