Hello,

I’ve got one tooth with a metal-porcelain combo crown (upper right no. 6). I’ve visited a metal-free dentist and, at first he said it was a no brainer to replace it with a composite crown. However, when I told him that the filling was close to the nerve, we did a simple test where I bit into what looked like a piece of a semi-hard cord, and I felt pain in the crowned tooth.

Based on that, the dentist determined that the tooth is compromised, and should be pulled out, because even if we did a new crown, the tooth would soon have to be looked after again.

I agree with him, but am in doubt at what to do afterwards. I’ve found here on the forum plenty of good info on the zirconium implants and calcium oxide root canals. However, these are not done in Canada yet (actually not sure about the root canals). The dentist suggested a titanium implant, but I’m reluctant for two reasons:

1) it’s still a metal, no matter how pure and bio-compatible
2) price – he’s asking $3,600 CAD

I’m leaning towards just pulling it out and doing nothing. However, the biggest show stopper is that the adjacent teeth will try to close the gap, and may eventually get to such an angle that they could fall out (though this will probably take more than 20 years).

So after a rather long introduction and background info, my question is is there a temporary tooth you could keep in place at night to preserve the gap and prevent the adjacent teeth from moving over? I also got this idea from this forum, but couldn’t find any more info.

And, of course any discussion on other solutions is welcome.

Thanks
cikatoma