And more importantly, what’s an “unreasonable” length of time to have to wait and/or jump from dentist chair to dentist chair?
I had a tooth suddenly get painful in March. Went to my new dentist. (My old dentist retired recently.) The tooth is all decayed (the reason it suddenly started hurting was because it had broken) and needs a root canal, so I get the referral to the endodontist and get the root canal. When that heals, I go back to the regular dentist and he says that the root canal had to take more of the tooth than he expected, so now I need a distal wedge procedure. One periodontal procedure and 5 more weeks of healing later, I made the appointment with my regular dentist to get the crown. That appointment was scheduled for today, but yesterday I got a call from the dentist at 8:45am (I wasn’t awake yet, so they left a message) saying they had an emergency and would have to reschedule. I’ve called them 9 times between yesterday and today to try to reschedule and can’t get a hold of them. So…
Anyway, it’s been 6 months and my tooth is still half-done. No crown. He “built it up” to make it ready for a crown, I guess. And I’ve gotten the distal wedge done. So it should be all ready. But does all the waiting and logistics and stuff really take 6 over months to get a crown sometimes?
And, of course, I don’t even have a temporary crown yet, so I expect it to take significantly longer than it already has.
Now, the rest of this is a tangent, but I kindof suspect this wasn’t a cavity like he said, but rather a resorption. Aside from this, I haven’t had a cavity in 20 years. But I just had a resorption about 2.5 years ago. In the corresponding tooth symmetrically across from this one that’s getting the crown. Also, my regular dentist’s dental hygenist and both the endodontist and periodontist remarked that they’ve never seen a cavity on the back of the back-most top tooth like this one before. (Tooth number 2 if you’re keeping track. I had my wisdom teeth out like 20 years ago-ish.) And guess where the resorption was 2.5 years ago? (I mean, it was a resorption, so it started inside the tooth, but when it finally got to the outside surface…) it was on the back of my backmost top tooth.
Anyway, that part’s just a rant, but yeah. Am I wrong to be pissed at being strung along this long?
Update: Still haven’t heard back from them. Called more times. I finally went there in person to see if I could get a human and there were a bunch of “sorry we missed you” notes from UPS/FedEx. Like, they weren’t at the office to receive packages. So… :\
Been down this path, just had a crown fitted on a pre-molar last week. I’m in the UK and I had this done on our free National Health Service. It took two weeks. First appointment was root canal, prepping the tooth for a crown, taking impressions of the mouth so they could make the final crown and fitting a temporary crown. That took an hour appointment and was done under local anaesthetic.
Second appointment 2 weeks to the day later was to remove the temporary crown which takes seconds, clean up the area and fit the new crown. That took a half hour appointment and was done without any anaesthetic or numbing.
And that is on our state healthcare in the UK that we all moan about. I am hazarding a guess you’re in the USA so your dentist is probably trying to milk your health insurance company for all they’re worth. It’s quite funny when Americans come to the UK and have to have treatment and they post it on social media. They go on about how there’s not a massive barrage of tests etc that get done and a lot of other things they’d get in the USA and how bad that is. It’s then pointed out that it’s because our healthcare professionals aren’t trying to screw insurance companies for all they’re worth so you get the tests you actually need and not ones that are barely tenuously related to maximise profit.
I am hazarding a guess you’re in the USA so your dentist is probably trying to milk your health insurance company for all they’re worth.
Oh you sweet summer child.
Health insurance in the U.S. doesn’t cover teeth. What are you crazy? Dental issues aren’t medical issues, you see. They’re dental issues. And dental issues are a whole different thing. So if you want dental coverage, you need dental insurance specifically.
And it’s a lot more common not to have dental insurance than not to have medical insurance. Because I think not being “medical” insurance exactly, they’re less regulated and so can deny more of the claims that they get than medical insurance can. Which runs you the risk of paying monthly for it and then getting your claims denied when it really matters.
And I’m one of the ones who doesn’t have dental insurance. (Partially because as I said earlier, I haven’t had a cavity in 20 years.) So it’s me they’re milking, not an insurance company. To the tune of about $4,200 so far between the dentist, endodontist, and periodontist. I think that includes the cost of the crown (like, they had me pay in advance for the crown, which makes it even more infuriating that they’re putting me off).
I got an emergency appointment within hours so they could do a temporary hotfix to relieve the pain so I could at least function as a human again, then I came back in after a week or so for the permanent fix, which obviously took longer and needed to be scheduled.
This is the correct answer
There’s no getting around the healing time between procedures, but that should have been factored in to your appointments from the start. Anything beyond the required healing plus about two weeks per appointment over the entire course seems excessive to me.
I’ve had some major work done in my teeth,(more complicated than this) and I never had to wait that long from start to finish.
- exam confirms it’s more than a filling
- 4 days for next appointment and temporary crown
- 7 days to next appointment for final crown
Dentist was 100yds from my door.
About the same length of time for me. (I’m in the us in Minnesota ( just for reference))
My friend just had this done. From what I heard, it took multiple appointments and weeks to a month to get fully done. Maybe, and I don’t know this for a fact, the dentists just want to squeeze every dime from the insurance companies, but idk much about that subject so I could be wrong about why it takes a consult, a cleaning, the root canal, and the crown all in different visits. It is just my best guess.
It does sound like your current dentist is having trouble managing appointments, but the general timeframe sounds about the same for when I had a root canal done. I had 4 separate appointments before the job was completely done. The first appointment at least stopped the pain, so I no longer felt like I was being stabbed with a knife in my mouth if I accidentally bit down on something with that tooth.
Maybe ask around other dentists if your current one is being unresponsive. Since you’vr already started the procedure you’ll definitely want to get it finished. I imagine leaving it half finished will only cause more problems for you down the line.
I had 4 separate appointments before the job was completely done.
In the UK. I had two. First to deal with pain, second to do the root canal.
I experienced this. I had a tooth infection, so it was a literal emergency. Took 3 days to get seen. When I was in agonizing pain. It was awful. As for getting the temp filling replaced with a permanent one, I think it took 6 weeks, and that was the earliest I could get it. I believe they recommended I get it fixed in two weeks. I did call a lot of dentists to get this timeline done.
edited to remove unnecessary personal info. tl;dr I had to see different specialists and it took 2-3 months to get all the work done.