I had a dental crown placed. There was nothing wrong with the tooth except that it stuck out from the other teeth. I wanted to fix it without braces and he suggested a dental crown. Soon after I had the crown placed, my tooth became sensitive to hot and cold. My dentist told me not to worry about that and it was fairly normal. A month later I was in so much pain that I went to the ER. They told me I needed to see a dentist because the tooth was infected. All they could do was give me antibiotics for a few days. I went to see a different dentist because I no longer trusted this one. This dentist agreed that the tooth was infected and said that I’d need a root canal treatment. He also told me that the crowns had something called open margins, which is what led to my infection. He showed me the x-ray and the margins are pretty big. I called my original dentist to ask for my money back because now I’m going to have to pay for all this extra work. They blamed me saying that I didn’t take care of the crown afterward and that they are not giving me a refund. I’d already paid over half. To make things worse they said if I didn’t complete the payment that they’d send me to collections. What do I do? I have to pay a lot of money to get this situation fixed. I don’t know that I can afford it without the refund.
Laura
Dear Laura,
I am sorry this happened to you. I would ask the second dentist if he would be willing to do the procedure you need and allow you to pay it out while you work on getting your money back from the first dentist. You have a dental emergency on your hands and it is only going to spread. There are people who die from untreated tooth infections every year. I’m not saying this to frighten you, but just to make sure that you don’t wait.
Something very important to check when a dental crown is being seated is that there are no open margins. A dentist would do that by running an explorer along the margins and make sure there are no places that are open. It looks like your dentist violated the standard of care for that. There are a few things you can do to try and get that refund.
First, threaten to go to the dental board. Your dentist won’t want them involved. It’s especially good that you have documentation from another dentist of his neglect. You can mention that. You can also have the other dentist contact your original caregiver. Sometimes a dentist will give a refund in order to not look bad in front of a peer. A third thing you can do is have a lawyer write a letter threatening a malpractice suit. A letter from an attorney may cause him to take it more seriously. I will warn you that dental malpractice suits rarely give enough money to justify the time and cost, but I do think the threat of one will go far.
This blog is brought to you by Libertyville Dentist Dr. David Potts.