Should dentist have warned me about deep filling?

[Asdf]

I had a cavity that I had neglected and it got to the point where I was getting toothaches after eating certain types of food that would last a few hours.

I haven't been to a dentist in about 8 years and never had to deal with a cavity before.

I called a dentist and told them what was happening and that I thought I had a cavity and they had me come in to get it checked out.

The dentist did an x-ray and did a cold test on the tooth which showed that it was way more sensitive than the other teeth. He told me I didn't need a root canal and gave me a composite filling. He told me it would be sensitive for some time after.

Shortly after the local anaesthetic wore off, I was eating a hamburger and experienced the worst shooting pain ever in my life the moment I chewed into it with that tooth. The tooth was also extremely sensitive to cold and sensitive to heat.

After a couple months it was still sensitive to pressure but not nearly as bad, but still just as sensitive to temperature. I visited the dentist again and they told me after testing it that because it was such a deep filling, the tooth isnt healing right, that the nerve is slowly dying and that it's most likely going to need a root canal.

After some time I started getting toothaches from time to time usually after using the tooth to chew. They adjusted the bite a couple times until they finally took the tooth out of my bite, but the tooth aches got worse and more frequent. It finally ended up getting really painful and then suddenly the almost all the sensitivity went away. It was still very painful and felt like something sharp was clamped around the right side of my mouth. It was the weekend so I couldn't come in, but they prescribed an antibiotic that handled the pain within a couple day.

When I saw them again they told me they did an x-ray and found that there was an infection and that I definitely needed a root canal.

It's now about 6 months since the original filling and i just had the root canal done.

They had not informed me that there was a high risk involved in my situation thus misleading me a into getting a filling where I otherwise could have made a choice to look into the less risky alternatives such as Pulp Cap or Vital Pulp Therapy (avoidrootcanal.org). If they had honestly told me about the risks and I decided to do the filling anyways, then that would be fine, but they didn't. This conveniently led me into needing a Root Canal and giving them almost another $1800 over the $300 of the original filling.

I tried asking for at least a discount of the amount of the original filling, but they blamed me for the fact that I let it get so bad in the first place, that filling aren't 100% and that I was already told I was going to possibly need Root Canal and they can't control it if the tooth decides to die and that they gave me the service I paid for.

I tried to argue that they did not inform me of the risk before giving me the filling and that the tooth immediately had a problem after the filling but I might as well have been talking to a brick wall. It just seems like they were just trying to bend the facts in order to not have to take responsibility for screwing me over.

I honestly feel like rightfully I shouldn't have to pay for any of the work done on that tooth because they failed to inform me of the risk before doing the filling which denied me the ability to make an informed decision on the matter.

Do I have any sort of recourse for this?

 

[JImmyF]

I hear you. This is the exact same thing I'm worried about in regards to my own tooth. The underlying issue is one of ethics. You suspect your dentist set you up for failure in order to maximize profits. Is that the truth? I don't know. I do understand the concern because I share it. More broadly, I think this is part of the problem with health care in America generally. Insurance companies cut reimbursement rates and so the medical professionals respond by increasing volume which lead to further cuts in rates in order to contain costs and a vicious cycle sets in creating a landscape littered with suffering patients subjected to a lot of unnecessary pain and expense.

What compounds this situation is that there are a lot of grey areas. Maybe the dentist really did do what he thought was in your best interests and maybe it just didn't work out. Maybe. We all want to believe that the doctor is working in our best interests but sometimes that just isn't so.

 

[Asdf]

Thanks.

The issue here I see now is informed consent. Regardless of the intentions of the dentist, are they not required to tell me what the risks are before performing a procedure?

I've since found out there's a biomimetic dentist nearby that has a much higher success rate in saving teeth with deep cavities compared to just doing a standard filling. They carefully clear out the cavity and use a special bonding material that mimics the enamel of the tooth to rebuild it wheras the standard composite resin filling requires a significant amount of drilling out of the healthy structure of the tooth so that it will stay in, composite fillings actually require 30% more of the tooth to be drilled out over the old mercury fillings even.

When the dentist told me I didn't need a root canal and told me I needed a filling there was no warning that because of how deep my cavity was that it would be risky. So, either he was negligent for not telling me or incompetent for not recognizing the risk.

So I was screwed out of the chance of saving my tooth which ended up costing me thousands of dollars for a root canal and potentially causing me serious health issues down the road and they won't even refund me for the original failed filling.