Did My Veneers Cause Me to Need Root Canal Treatments?

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I just had a smile makeover done with veneer crowns. My dentist put ten each on my upper and lower arch. It wasn’t long after the permanent veneer crowns were placed that I started having pain. My dentist did several adjustments. Eventually, they felt fine. Then the pain started back along with two abscesses. I went to see an endodontist and he said the nerves have died and I now need root canal treatments. I was pretty upset about it because I was never told this was a possibility. My dentist told me there were not risks with veneer crowns. I had the endodontist check out my other teeth while I was there and he found two more teeth with problems. So far I’ve had four root canal treatments and I have another tooth that is starting to bother me. Is this going to be a consistent problem? Is this common?

Angela

Dear Angela,

I am concerned with some of the things I am hearing here. First, you should know that there is no such thing as veneer crowns. There are porcelain veneers and there are porcelain crowns. If your dentist hinted that crowns were veneers, he misled you. The easiest way to know which one you actually received is how they fit on your teeth. I suspect, you were given dental crowns.

If they are just covering the front of your teeth and hugging the sides a little, you have porcelain veneers. If they wrap all the way around your teeth, then you have dental crowns. Another way to know is based on the tooth preparation.

The tooth preparation is just a few millimeters off the front of your teeth for porcelain veneers, but for crowns, they will be ground down quite a bit to make room for the crown to go all the way around the tooth. My guess is not only did you get dental crowns, but your dentist over prepped the teeth by grinding them down more than was necessary, leading to the nerve damage.

If you just went in for a smile makeover then this would be a massive overtreatment. I believe the dentist should be held accountable for the damage done to your teeth. At the least I would expect him to pay for the root canal treatments that became necessary as a result of his work.

Inexperienced cosmetic dentists will sometimes push a patient that wants a smile makeover toward dental crowns instead of veneers because they know how to do crowns but don’t have the training for veneers.

I’m sorry this happened to you.

This blog is brought to you by Naples, FL Cosmetic Dentist Dr. Long.