*You can turn on captions for the video by turning on the “CC” button in the bottom lefthand corner of the video.
Transcript below:
Hi! I am Dr. McVey. I just wanted to talk to you about my experiences as a dental patient, not as a dentist. Over my lifetime, I've had a significant amount of dental work done. When I was in junior high, I went through orthodontics. I had four teeth extracted before starting my braces treatment. After that, I had my four wisdom teeth removed, and then as an adult, I developed some temporal mandibular dysfunction pain in my joints and went through orthodontics yet again as an adult. And at the end of that orthodontic treatment, I had orthognathic surgery. That means that the surgeons separated my upper jaw from my skull, floated it in space, and fixed it in place with plates and screws. And they did the same thing with my lower jaw to correct some bite issues that I was having. So, if you look at my panoramic x-ray, I sort of looked like the bionic man. I've got plates and screws all over the place.
I get my teeth cleaned regularly, and when I had my teeth cleaned just in September this year, the hygienist said, “I think you've got a cavity here.” And, I looked, and I could barely see it myself.
I said, “Yeah I probably need to get that looked at.” So I made an appointment with my friend and took a look.
And he looked at it. And said, “Randy, I don't think that's a cavity. I think it's external resorption.”
External resorption is like if you remember when you were a kid, and your baby teeth got loose. The reason that happened was because of external resorption. The permanent tooth has erupted and put pressure on the root of the primary tooth–of the baby tooth–, and then those roots would resorb, or dissolve, until eventually, there was no root left the tooth would get loose, and it would fall out.
We took a three-dimensional x-ray, and that confirmed that that was what it was. Not decay, and it was not only the one tooth that we originally were aware of, but the teeth on either side of it. And they are lower front teeth: one, two, three. Those three right there.
The prognosis for those is not real great with external resorption. Sometimes, unfortunately, with permanent teeth, usually it's the result of trauma. I've gone through orthodontics twice and I've had pretty major orthognathic surgery. So, I have an appointment with an endodontist November 1st which is coming up just a few weeks, (It was actually earlier this week) to see if they think by doing root canals and some other treatments we might be able to save those teeth for a while. That would be okay if I could keep those teeth even for another year or two. If not then what is probably going to happen is I'm going to lose those three teeth in the lower front, and I will have at least two implants placed and crowns to replace the missing teeth. So not real happy about that, but what are you gonna do? I mean, life happens to all of us.
So there will be more to come as I find out more after I see the endodontist. I will post another video
and let you know what I found out as my case progresses. Thanks.
Credits:
