Was he doing a filling or a crown?If the tooth overheats while the dentist is working on it the nerve often dies. If the dentist takes breaks and uses cold water , the tooth is unlikely to die . The chronic pain may also be caused by fracture of the tooth from the procedure.

If he was making a filling and hit the nerve the most posible thing is that you have a big cavity, and while removing it he got to the nerve.. is normal to happend if the cavity is big...

Dentists have a financial incentive to work as fast as possible . Some dentists practice for ten years withour ever killing a tooth and some kill them every day according to Frank Jerome DDS. If the dentist attacks your tooth like a construction worker with jackhammer, he is likely to remove healthy tooth structure as well as decay and to overheat the nerve. The more tooth structure removed ,the more likely your tooth is to die . If a dentist kills one of your teeth ,don't assume that such an event was inevitable. Instead , blame the dentist and find another dentist .

DEentists often reccomend unneccessary work . I had more than one dentist tell me to crown several my teeth many years ago . The ones I crowned died or have gum recession and borderline periodontal problems , whereas the others that I was told to crown but did'nt crown or do anything to are fine.

I took my daughter to a pediatric dentist and she kept having pain after a filling. I just thought it was the hot/cold type pain, but it got so excruciating I had to take her to the emergency room. I then took her to my dentist and he said that the nerve was dying. He also asked me if the pediatic dentist had even looked at her xray before she started filling. My son who had also gone to her questioned if that dentist even knew what she was doing. She was working so fast and had so many patients! I don't want my daughter to have a root canal, but she is so young, I don't want her to have the tooth extracted either!