I’m looking for some advice on what to do in my current situation.
A dentist in my small city started root canal treatment in September. I was told it would take five appointments. I just had my seventh appointment. Each time they work on the roots and I’m not sure why it’s taken this many appointments. In my home country it took two appointments.
The dentist also completely ruined my tooth structure. When I was younger I had braces. Prior to my first appointment I had no gaps and use a retainer. He couldn’t get my retainer to fit after putting on a temporary crown and decided to make a huge gap between my teeth without consulting me. He also tried to alter my retainer.
On the sixth visit he covered most of the gap with a new temporary crown after I let him know I was upset about it but then made the overall tooth diameter too large on the other side of the tooth.
Today I told him my concerns and while he fixed the diameter for the most part, he also drilled off the part that fixed the gap. So how I have a giant gap again. The gap area was not the problem area for the diameter.
I’ve had over 30+ needles since September and have mentioned I want this fixed asap but I feel like my concerns are being ignored.
I don’t speak much Japanese and the dentist doesn’t speak a lot of English. The people that work there have been really kind and do their best to translate but I’m getting really frustrated. I feel bad because they have gone out of their way to translate and have been accommodating when I needed to reschedule a couple of times. They also gave me pain killers.
The gap he created undid the work my braces did, he’s not understanding that I don’t want large gap between my tooth (that wasn’t there to begin with), my bite feels off and I don’t know how many more appointments they want me to come for. Maybe my roots are too long as well since he keeps working on them.
Sorry for the long post. Any advice on how to proceed? Should I just stop going and try to find another place to try and fix my ruined tooth? With the language barrier I feel stuck and I don’t want to cause any trouble. Any recommendations for English speaking dentists in Saitama or Tokyo?
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Dentists taking many appointments to do relatively simple things is a common complaint here – it’s because of an ass-backwards policy in the health insurance system which pays them for a maximum of 30 minutes in each patient visit, meaning they don’t get fully paid if they don’t space the work out over multiple visits. It sucks and the only way around it is to pay them off-insurance (which actually isn’t crazy expensive in general, but still not ideal of course).
That said, if you have an infection in your tooth root (which sounds likely if this is a previous root canal being redone?), it can take quite a few visits to get it sorted out – they can’t risk putting a proper crown on the tooth until they’re sure the infection is gone, so even with the best dentist in the world you can be in and out having the temporary crown removed and the tooth root probed quite a few times until all the signs of infection are gone.
That said, it sounds like you have a real communication problem over the cosmetic side of things, and you should never be afraid to switch to a new medical professional if you’re not happy with the care you’re getting. I’ve personally had really good experiences with Hitomi Dental Clinic in Edogawabashi – most of the senior staff speak great English and they’re very good about getting the cosmetic side of things right when doing any work. (I had issues with front teeth requiring root canals and crowns, so the cosmetic side was a big concern – they did a great job, although it took a long time to be totally finished as they needed to fix some alignments etc. on the way.)
Getting the final step of a root canal done next week at Shibuya HaPlus, which I highly recommend: [https://haplus.jp/en/](https://haplus.jp/en/)
It was still of course a multi-step process with 4 or 5 appointments dedicated to root cleaning and re-filling. I’m not a good patient by any means, but the level of discomfort was so minimal that I really didn’t mind going back so often to chill out in the chair while they did their thing. It’s the first time I’ve felt almost NOTHING when getting the needle, and I can trust them to go smoothly without the needle when they suggest it now also.
As a note, I’m being treated by Dr. Shinohara who doesn’t speak English, but her counterpart Dr. Kimura is near fluent. The reviews on both of them are fantastic, which is why I initially chose it. I’ve a few implants I’ve been meaning to get done, and will likely go with them again.
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For a speedy process (2-3 visits), I’ve heard great things about Smile Dental in Harajuku and their fluent English staff.
The more central, younger generation dentists really are a cut above what I’ve previously used further out in the outskirts, and even those far surpassed anything in my home country. Definitely getting everything sorted here with the Japanese health insurance.
Hope this helps!