By Lee R. Phillips

I don’t usually comment on personal situations, but I think there is a lesson to be learned here.  If I can help a couple of my students in their personal situations, it will be worth the comment.  Kristy, my wife, had oral surgery Friday.  She had had a root canal a year ago, and it just always pained her.  She kept going back in, and the dentist said that the occlusion (bite) wasn’t right on the crown.  So he would grind on the crown and then tell her to give it several weeks to “settle down.”

About two months ago a neighbor, who is a chiropractor, suddenly had a sore shoulder, which is not good for chiropractors.  It felt warm to him one night, so he ordered an MRI.  There turned out to be a massive infection in the shoulder.  He spent over two weeks in the hospital and had surgery to remove the infection.  Nobody could figure out why he had an infection there.  He had no prior surgery or anything.  Finally, the infectious disease guys asked him if he had any teeth work done.  He had had a root canal done a year earlier at about the same time Kristy had had hers done.  His tooth was bad.  They had missed one of the roots.  The tooth had caused the infection in his shoulder.

Kristy has had some pain, but she doesn’t do well with infections, so when the neighbor showed up with an infection, we started thinking.  She went to an endodontist.  Sure enough, the dentist had missed one of the roots.  Sixty percent of the big molars have three roots and forty percent have four roots.  The dentists almost always miss the fourth root.  Hers was infected.  The infection had eaten the top jaw and there was a pocket of infection the size of a pea. (That’s a lot of bone gone.)  The cavity free tooth next to it was dead, and that tooth was causing most of the pain.  There are now two dead teeth, two root canals, two crowns, and a 90-minute surgery.  (I got to watch the surgery.  It was kind of a neat surgery.  Lawyers love pain and suffering

Kristy will be OK, but it cost $5000, hurts, and just is not good. (That’s the polite way of saying it.)  The take home message is (1) never have a dentist do a root canal and (2) watch closely for a year or two after the root canal.  The endodontist does the root canals.  He uses a microscope to see the extra root or two.  It does cost more, but it isn’t worth the risk of having your dentist do the root canal.  The tooth should be dead with no feeling after the root canal.  Kristy had had the crown put on without any deadening agent, but then it started to hurt just a little bit all the time.

Since we have become card carrying members of the botched up root canal club, we have heard a lot of nightmare stories.  Take the root canal seriously.  Have the endodontist do it, and watch carefully.  There shouldn’t be anything weird after it is over, anywhere in your body.  If something unexplained happens, suspect the tooth.

Hope this helps save you a problem.  Lee

PS   No, we’re not suing the dentist.  In fact, we are still friends even after my yelling.