What Happens When The Power Fails During a Root Canal?
Dentistry, Workland June 11th, 2008
It’s that time of the year when storms in Workland can knock power out for seconds to hours. It’s an annual ritual for us to have at least 1 patient per year experience a power failure during a procedure.
I only work during the day and we have lots of windows in the treatment rooms at the office but storm clouds are quite dark and so we usually have to break out the flashlights in order to finish things up. I haven’t needed a power generator…yet. That’s unlike the periodontists next door.
A patient that I saw back in 2005 during a power failure returned yesterday for me to check out an unrelated tooth. Here’s my treatment note from back then:
Here’s my post-op xray of the tooth I worked on (I did the 5 and the 7):
And here’s the tooth as it stands today:
There’s a massive screw post that her dentist has placed almost to the apex. I don’t know how long this tooth will survive before it either splits along the root or bacterial leakage happens alongside the post.
Morale of story? Not really sure, but it has something to do with power failures affecting root canal treatment prognosis less than irresponsible dentistry does.
June 11th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
The impatient patient. Was your service that bad, she had to go look for another dentist? It wasn’t your fault the power went out.
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June 11th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I do the root canal work, patients go back to their dentist afterwards for the other work (fillings, crowns, etc). And therein lies the problem. When poorly done restorative work fails, the root canal gets infected, and often the endodontist gets blamed for crappy work.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
(((cringe)))
screw posts are the anti-christ.
June 12th, 2008 at 2:20 am
That post looks horrid. I’d really be rather upset if I did the endo and someone did this to the tooth.
June 14th, 2008 at 8:07 am
person: At least this post isn’t a tapered screw. Those are the worst.
Edgar: I used to get more upset than I now do about stuff that like this that I see. I’ve probably just become numb. The blog has probably been therapeutic that way for me. It was the main reason that I started it in the first place.