Is it Revvie P who is the dentist on here? Anyway, just had to have a filling done and the dentist said that the decay had gone quite deep and therefore he was putting a white filling in that was harder and that if I was pain free for six months then this will be fine, but of I have any pain in the tooth then I will probably need to have root canal work done. Does this sound credible? At what point does decay inside a tooth become detectable? Would I be better off getting the pliers on the fecker? What is involved in root canal work?
Root canal Treatmant is where they file inside the root to get rid of all the decay.</p> They start with thin files and then get gradually bigger before filling the entire root canal.</p> Be warned it hurts and also requires lots of appointments in a short period of time which means it costs quite a bit.</p>
Don't know if this is of any use to you but I had one shattered at the back, a bit later on half of it fell out and about six months after that I went to the dentist. He gave me what he desribed as a very temporary filling to put me on before some major rebuilding work and it's been like that for the last four years without a moments trouble. I think some of them like to err on the side of getting themselves a bit of work but it's your mouth mate.</p> Edited the some of them in because last time I criticised dentists Revvie P was going to kick my head in.</p>
Yes, that sounds credible. To answer your other questions Decay becomes detectable when the enamel surface cavitates. Teeth are in 3 layers from the surface inwards - enamel, dentine and pulp (nerve). Basically, tooth enamel can lose mineral from the surface, become porous and allow ingress of bacteria without visible signs or irreversible damage. Tooth enamel is a thin, hard but brittle layer on the tooth, the bulk of the tooth being made from dentine. The dentine is resilient and is required to support the brittle enamel. (Maybe a good analogy here is reinforced concrete - concrete is hard but the metal provides the resilience. If you made a lamp post out of concrete it would just snap in a gentle breeze but the metal absorbs these forces better and so a reinforced concrete lamp post works) Once bacteria get into the dentine, think of the decay in the dentine as rust getting into the metal of reinforced concrete - so the brittle outer shell begins to cave in and you have a visible sign. How visible this is depends on where on the tooth it is. Where adjacent teeth touch eachother is a common place for decay to start but not a place where visible access is good. Hence these cavities tend to be bigger by the time they are noticed. Also, the nerve may be quite close to the surface in these areas. When you remove decay, the vibration from the drill and inherent porosity of dentine, can cause bacteria to get into the pulp. The closer to the pulp you're drilling, the greater the chance. However, if you don't remove the decay, you can guarantee bacteria will get there eventually. The pulp, essentially, lives in a closed box with a poor blood supply and so is easily overrun with infection. So your dentist has removed the decay, put the best sealing material for the job in to kill off and prevent further ingress of bacteria. Now what you're hoping is that any ingress of bacteria into the nerve will be dealt with by your immune system. If it is, fine. If not, the nerve will be overrun and you'll get spreading infection into your jaw. If this happens he will need to drill through into the pulp and remove the pulp in its entirity before sealing off the space thus created. This is root canal treatment and Nutkins is about right with his descriptive. Once root filled, teeth tend to become brittle as the dentine dries out following pulp removal. So you usually end up with a crown as well. If it stays settled, great. If not, get your dentist to quote you for a root canal, ask him how confident he is it will work (further back in the mouth, matters of access and curvature of roots can make root canal work difficult or even impossible), how likely it is it'll need a crown as well and if so how much this will cost. Then make your mind up.
Thanks for that... I might as well, if there is any pain from it over the next six months, just get the frigger whipped out. At least lt would be less painful and less expensive I'd guess. Although I am NHS so will only pay £44.60 I think, for the root canal work. Is it normal to have some slight pain following the drilling etc of this magnitude?
Oh and another thing.. I did not have a cavity in the tooth; all there was was a dark spot that he saw and showed me on the recent routine checkup. Nowt was picked up at the last checkup
Sorry to be a pain in the anus.. but how long is it reasonable to expect it to last for? And how much would I pay NHS way for root canal?
RE: Sorry to be a pain in the anus.. get some string between the door and your tooth ps, m8 has over the years pulled all his own out with plyers S)
had root canal work done once before what a lot of fecking around, and very expensive. The tooth had to be taken out four or five years later. Late last year had a tooth on the other side gi me the same gip...dentist harped on about root canals and how they preffered to save the tooth ..yadda yadda yadda.... get the fecker out said I. took 15 mins nd it was gone and cost me a minute fraction of lining his wallet.
Im the same, i might go and join revvie Ps practice, at least we could talk about the reds while hes drilling the nackers off one off my teeth or something ha!
