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Bad Dentistry - Heart Problems from Bad Root Canal

What follows below is a real case study submitted by a reader of this website. It describes how their health was harmed by bad dentistry.

I can’t tell you how terrific your idea is to alert consumers about “bad dentistry” because I am one of the victims.

To be brief for now let me say I had a terrific dentist growing up and spent a lot of time in a dentist’s chair because I have (had) soft teeth. I grew up in the 40s and 50s in New York City (an inner city kid) and I guess we didn’t know as much then as we do now, but my mother insisted we (me and my sisters) get good dental care.

Fast forward to the present, I have a case before the California Dental Board now with the Attorney General’s Office in San Diego this month, I believe after five years of waiting and delays. The latest is that the dentist claims never to have treated me at all, which is an out and out lie. I’ve found out that there were others injured by this same guy and his practice at the same time I was there.

I wasn’t able to get a malpractice attorney because they said I waited too long but I didn’t. The case before the Dental Board was the cause for that delay. They claimed they were understaffed for more than two years after I filed my complaint.

Now compounding this the CA AG seems to have bungled the job further, but I won’t get into that now.

It was a new and large Dental Practice starting up in Orange County California promising discounted prices and an array of experts who contributed their time from other practices in the area, plus we had a lot of young dentists with very little, if any, supervision and one of those treated an infected tooth, just like what I heard you say in your email about someone else. I had an abscessed tooth causing me a great deal of pain so I saw this young dentist named Mark or Doctor Mark as he liked to be called. He was twenty-something and probably fresh out of dental school. To set the stage properly let me describe the office set-up. It was located on the top floor of a six story high rise and it took up the entire floor. The practice offered valet parking to everyone, was busy for the first month and then it dwindled down to hardly any people. These dentists sat around and chatted with each other most of the time when not treating anyone. In my experience that situation leads to a lack of professionalism whereby patients are treated with contempt for interrupting their idleness. I know you’ve seen this in other areas of business where employees have nothing to do and get a “bad attitude”, well this is what I faced with Dr Mark. He had an assistant too, another dentist of the same caliber who began a root canal, or so I thought. I’ve had root canals done by real dentists before and it usually took about an hour depending on how meticulous the dentist was (old school dentists decades earlier) and this guy took less than 10 minutes and after opening the tooth which relieved the pain he said I was done and could leave (assumed by me since he never escorted me to the front desk or gave me further instructions). On the next visit that tooth was crowned by a different dentist. No questions asked or concerns about a previous treatment success or failure and that’s when my trouble began. I had a lot of pain but couldn’t get anyone to see me. I was labeled as a complainer who always demanded more than he was getting (like real dentistry). The tooth eventually died and the pain went away.

Now I don’t know if this is related or not but that same year, six months later, I was hospitalized for congestive heart failure. Why this is odd is because I’m a health and fitness nut aka bodybuilder and rarely if ever got sick. I lived near the beach for that reason and got plenty of exercise and took nutritional supplements, so when I came down with an upper-respiratory infection I treated it until the day I decided to go to emergency at the local VA Hospital. I was coughing up blood and that symptom told me I’d better get help. That was in 2006. In 2007 I had heart surgery as a result of a failed aortic valve first diagnosed at that hospital visit in late 2006. I searched for the right surgeon and found him, the operation was successful and I'm still waiting with unfinished dental work (two temporary crowns) with no money now to finish the job. I’m retired now and on SSI and lost my car due to this economic situation we’re in today and am barely able to make it month to month on my retirement income. I still don’t know where to turn and I don’t trust dentists anymore plus the high cost of dentistry is absurd now.

Dentists and their profession are living in a dream world thinking they can still charge the same prices as they did when times were good. I reflect back to my dentist from my youth and wish I had him now. He was a one-man show in a very small, but very efficient, office. I remember seeing his certificates on the wall of his office and one of them was from being a survivor from the “Battle of the Bulge” in World War Two. People from that era suffered a lot, first with the great Depression and then the war and when they came back they had a firm resolve, that is absent today, to provide service. That’s the only way I can describe it.

Today dental practices are compartmentalized so much with so much extra staff that one rarely sees the dentist to practice dentistry relying on dental assistants to do the actual work. I don’t like it and that’s why I’m where I am now, no money and no solution.

The AG says they will try and get me some money from the guy I’m suing but I don’t hold much hope for that. He’ll probably get a slap on the wrist, pay a fine and get a suspension. He no longer practices where all this happened in 2006 and I live in northern California now so distance is an issue. I live in Palo Alto/East Palo Alto area. I still work out at a gym and take supplements because they are a concentration of nutrients I know my body needs to repair and build muscle and I don’t trust the food supply to do that.

I applaud your efforts in both providing nutritional advice in your newsletter and now wanting to form this registry of “Bad Dentists”. The dentist in question’s name is David Yakzar. He was located in Irvine back then but I have no idea where he practices. Dr Mark has no last name. Oh yeah, I contracted with Yakzar to do a “full-mouth reconstruction” and came in there with nine functional crowns in 3-tooth bridges to be replaced with implant crowns and individual crowns replacing the bridges. Even one of the implants was done wrong and is useless so I had another dentist restore a bridge in front so I could eat. Man, I’m telling you, compared to what I went in with and what I have now my mouth is a disaster area!!!!!!

Ramiel Nagel, author of Cure Tooth Decay's comments

Many people do not know if they have had bad dentistry. Crowns and root canals take a considerable amount of time to be done correctly. In this case Rob's health and life were at risk from an improperly done root canal. The heart problems are likely connected to a focal infection caused or contributed to by the botched root canal.

Why Bad Dentistry?

I decided to create an area on my website to focus on bad dentistry. Many people have kept quiet about the mistreatment of their teeth by dentists. I do not encourage people to avoid dentists, but in order to get people to go to the dentist, the dentist must provide excellent care. Unfortunately most do not. This list can help you find a good dentist.

Modern dentistry, in general, damages our teeth. It drills away too much healthy tooth structure. It places toxic materials in our mouths, and recommends treatments that don't last over the long term. Moving beyond bad dentistry means using the book, Cure Tooth Decay, to help you remineralize your cavities naturally.

You can submit a story about how dentistry has negatively harmed your life by sending an e-mail to: testimonial@curetoothdecay.com
Make sure to include the name you want posted on your testimonial, a little bit about yourself, and how you were harmed by bad dentistry. You do not need to remain silent about the harm done to your mouth. Because I do not want to be in the middle of any type of dispute I will not post the name of the bad dentist.

Other people have learned the secrets to stopping cavities with the published book Cure Tooth Decay

I had several very painful cavities postpartum (after having twins) that kept me up all night in pain and made it so I could barely eat... After following the advice in this book accurately my tooth pain subsided within 24 hours and no longer hurt at all, my teeth also look nicer and my gums no longer bleed and are a nice pink color. - J. Steuernol, Canada