I have been grinding my teeth for years and my dentist told me it has gotten to the point that I need to have all my teeth crowned. He had to extract some teeth and place implants. For the rest, he did what is he called temporaries at first. I mentioned they felt odd and he told me that is because I am used to them being shorter. I trusted him. Now the permanent ones are on and these feel even worse. On one side of my mouth the teeth don’t touch at all, but on the other side they seem to touch too soon. I don’t know if I’m making any sense. What I do know is it hurts when I bite down and my jaw hurts all the time. My dentist insists my procedure passed all the checkpoints. I don’t know what to do from here.
Miranda
Dear Miranda,
When your dentist crowns all your teeth it is known as a full-mouth reconstruction. It is a very advanced procedure that has to be done carefully. Most dentists don’t have the training to pull this off. It takes extensive post-doctoral training to be able to do this correctly. I think your dentist is in over his head but isn’t ready to admit that.
One thing that concerns me is you said you’ve been grinding your teeth for a while and your dentist said it’s NOW time to do something about it. Does that mean he’s known about your grinding habit for a long time and hasn’t intervened? When a patient has a teeth grinding habit, the first step is to get them a night guard. This is like a special mouthpiece that helps protect your teeth from the grinding, which mostly happens during sleep. The fact that he didn’t do that really bothers me. That step could have saved you a lot of lost tooth structure, depending on how soon you received the treatment.
That is all water under the bridge now. We have to deal with your full-mouth reconstruction disaster. The fact that your teeth are not occluding correctly is a big deal and will lead to serious TMJ complications. I want you to see a dentist who is an expert in these type of issues. One way to find one is to look for a dentist who is a Fellow with the International Congress of Oral Implantologists (ICOI). These dentists have expert training and massive amounts of successful experience. You’ll find most also have done TMJ training as well and understand the proper way your teeth need to meet up with one another.
Look for an ICOI fellow. Have them make a determination about your case and help you secure a refund. Then, you can get this done properly.
This blog is brought to you by Sugar Land Dentist Dr. Thomas Siny.