Hi, I recently had a crown done and it became a root canal a few weeks later. The first time I had the crown done in April, the fit was incorrect and there was a space between my two molars which caused food to get trapped. It got heavily infected and hurt a lot. I had to go back and see the dentist the second time to get another crown made. Once again, they attempted and the fit was still incorrect. The third time, they got it correct, but my tooth was shaved down to a small nub. When the third crown was placed on it, the fit was too high and for weeks, I was in agonizing pain. I went back to the dentist after two weeks and he shaved down the crown and told me the pain would subside. I waited a month and the pain did not subside, one day it got worse until my whole head was throbbing. I went to the dentist and they took an x-ray and said that I would need to have a root canal done.

My question is: should I have to pay for the two procedures? I understand that the dentist could not have predicted that the crown would become a root canal. But I feel their negligence of putting the crown on correctly the first time and the subsequent times they had to try again caused severe trauma to the nerve that caused it to become a root canal.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

This happened to me and I've posted it before - I had TWO crowns, a root canal by the Dentist and a SECOND root canal by an Endodontist (because the Dentist didn't clean the tooth out properly). I had no case because I couldn't prove negligence - everyone is different. I was told it would be impossible to prove negligence without another Dentist to testify that negligence was involved.

And I work in the legal profession.

It is not uncommon for the nerve to die after a crown is placed so it would be hard to prove it was because of the number of crowns that were done. I realize it's frustrating to have this happen but at least the dentist didn't make you pay for all 3 crowns!