Re: root canal treatment

Based on observation, I would say that there is no single answer to your question "how hard is it to pull a tooth?".

Two case scenarios: #1), recently I drove a relative to have his abcessed root-canaled tooth removed, and yes, I took full advantage of this situation to introduce him to my growing base of knowledge on the root-canal-coverup, which of course was all news to him. Anyway, this involved an emergency visit to a new oral surgeon given that the primary dentist was too busy to treat this tooth himself until June and even at this, this dentist insisted on pursuing a plan of re-root canaling the tooth "to salvage it". Yes, dear patient with infected tooth and nagging pain, please wait till June for us to treat you. Difficult to believe they call this "treat", sounds more like "trick". So after the too-busy dentist blew off this situation, and other dentists in the yellow pages were also booked till june, a second phone call to the primary to at least pressure him to refer this case out to one of his buddy dentists netted the aforementioned oral surgeon, who agreed to do this extraction on the basis of "come into the office, bring some reading material, we'll work you in to our schedule". Upon arriving at the surgeon's office, was astounded to find no other patients were there yet, so we thought maybe with timing we got lukcy. By the time all the necessary up-your-rectum-with-a-microscope paper work was filled out (about 25 minutes) the office had become full and it then took a little over two hours waiting to get "worked in". When finally called into the treatment room ( I got to accompany), the surgeon did a quick inventory of the history with the involved tooth, applied what he called "special novacain" (markcaine sp?) that would last from 6 to 36 hours, then left the room to go back to tending another patient. In five minutes, he was back, tested the tooth for pain (a lot), stuck the special tool in the mouth and pulled the offending tooth out within seconds. Also showed some of the abcess that came out with it. Placed a wad of gauze in the mouth, provided instructions on how to treat for the next several days, $123, have a nice day, thank you very much. In this case I think it goes to show that a severely compromised tooth (original Amalgam filled, then root canaled, then abscessed) will come out with little or no effort.

#2, several years ago, I allowed my then dentist to talk me into having my wisdom teeth removed even though they were not causing me pain or other obvious symptoms. The X-rays did clearly show they were severely side-impacted so it seemed apparent it was only a matter of time before they would begin to cause obvious problems. On the day of what was supposed to be the removal of all 4 at the same visit, it took over 2 hours to get the first tooth out, during which I incurred much trauma with sometimes up to three hands in my mouth, yanking, gouging, twisting, just to get the blasted thing out, upon which the dentist held the tooth in front of my face and exclaimed "i've never seen a farg'ing tooth like that in my life!", followed by "gee, I guess perhaps I should have referred you out to an oral surgeon". The former I owe in part to a long standing daily mega dose regimen of Vitamin C, which among other benefits, strengthens the bones and teeth, and I believe this incident was first hand proof of these particular benefits. The latter I owe in part to a greedy dentist who, not unlike Jethro who always wanted to be a double-not spy, always wanted to be a butcher to help add a few $$ to hsi bank account.

Keep in mind there was no root canal involved with # 2, so back to your question, there is no cookie cutter answer to how difficult it may be to remove a given tooth, it depends on the circumstances of the given patient.

Good luck!

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