Dr. Hall,
My dentist said he was giving me veneers on my top six teeth. He shaved them down really far before giving me temporaries which I thought was odd. Two of the six teeth had already had root canals. After a bit one of the canines started to hurt but the pain was written off. Turns out I had a huge infection and had to have the tooth removed and had hospitalizations. The other canine also needed a root canal. I found out from the endodontist that these are in fact crowns. My dentist submitted crowns to the insurance, not that they paid for much. But this whole time they have been calling them veneers even in texts.
I have suffered a lot because of this and have paid a lot to take care of the teeth. Their website even explains the difference between veneers and crowns. Turns out they did the same to two other patients I know but they did not suffer side effects we just think he ground down my teeth too much. Is their anything legally I can do or even report them to a medical board?!?!
– Megan from Pennsylvania
(See Dr. Hall’s answer below.)
We thank our advertisers who help fund this site.
Megan,
Yes, I do think you have a valid malpractice claim. It might be possible for a dentist who does crowns instead of veneers to claim that there is some latitude in the definition of veneers. But if this dentist has a website that accurately explains what a veneer is and that’s not what you got, then he didn’t obtain informed consent. If a dentist performs a treatment on you for which you didn’t give consent or weren’t provided proper information about what the treatment consisted of, that is legally an assault and he could be held accountable.
Porcelain veneers are more technically demanding to do than crowns and many dentists don’t feel comfortable doing them, so they invent excuses to tell their patients about why their case isn’t appropriate for veneers. Others practice some level of deception. Some use the term “360-degree veneers” to try to get away with calling the procedure veneers when they are really crowns. Had your dentist tried that, it could make your case harder. But he didn’t.
Added to the deception, it looks like the aggressive tooth preparation required for doing crowns damaged both your canine teeth, requiring the one to be extracted and the other to need a root canal. It is highly unlikely that anything like this would have happened had your dentist done very conservative veneer preparations rather than crowns.
My suggestion—print out my answer and take it to a lawyer and see what they think. I do think you have a case.
– Dr. Hall
Do you have a comment or anything else to add? We’d love to hear from you. Enter your comment below. Or click here to ask Dr. Hall a question.
About David A. Hall
Dr. David A. Hall was one of the first 40 accredited cosmetic dentists in the world. He practiced cosmetic dentistry in Iowa, and in 1990 earned his accreditation with the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. He is now president of Infinity Dental Web, a company in Mesa, Arizona that does advanced internet marketing for dentists.