1/2 years ago, I had a root canal, post, crown on my canine tooth. One month ago, it became loose. I went to a different dentist. This dentist said crown will fall out any day and that there is alot of decay underneath. He said that I need to have everything extracted. Has anyone ever heard of so much decay under a crown? What type of dental procedure do you recommend I have done?
I think that if the tooth is so decayed then there is nothing to work with so you can't just remake the crown. You could extract the tooth and have the dentist make a bridge, or you can get an implant. The implant will be more expensive but the bridge won't be terribly LESS expensive, and with that you are also messing with the tooth in front of and behind it, where with the implant it just affects that one tooth area.
If there was an opening somewhere around the crown, then certainly it can begin to decay. Sorry you have to go through this.
Hi! It's possible but very unusual for a crown to fail like this in such a short timespan. What the second dds is implying is that the decay extends down to or at below the gum line --and this difficult (but sometimes possible) to rebuild. A crown lengthening "procedure" may be required to reduce the gum and bone height around the tooth in order to create the 2millimeters or so of space for the gum to heal around where the new crown line will fall. The post complicates things. I suspect the dentist has in mind an implant to replace the root-post-crown complex if it cannot be rebuilt. The canine is a very important tooth in the mouth and it is worth keeping or replacing. (it has the longest root in the mouth and with one canal is usually a straightforward root canal / post procedure. It is the tooth that bears all the forces of sliding your teeth from side to side (although in some people it is the tooth behind the canine that bears most of this brunt). (try closing your mouth and sliding your teeth to one side - it's most likely the canines that come into contact and cause the back teeth to come apart as you continue to slide a little further to that side as the canines on that side stay touching together.). Anyway, I might get a second opinion freon the original dds if possible. The most likely explanation is the crown came loose enough for bacteria to enter and actively decay the area under the tooth. Ask him to simply redo it, if that is indeed what happened. Good luck and let us knows how this goes if you get a chance. I'd hate to see you not have that canine in place!
Oops! Forgot to mention this. So after seeing for yourself how much sideways force the canines bear, it's easy to see how so much lateral pressure could cause the post inside to act as a wedge and crack part of the crown. That was the likely source of the crown cracking with subsequent decay traveling through the crown's resultant crack and setting up shop.
