Hi Longri,
Those are some of the points that Russ and I have been talking about over
the phone, each procedure has its proponents. It seem the dental community
is recommending the saving of the tooth, but if one is cynical, then they would
say that this is so the patient will have to pay for a crown, and if the root canal
is not properly cleaned out, which does happen, my dentist said that this procedure
is effective 80-85% of the time.
So if it gets reinfected they will have to remove
the crown, try to redo the root canal which is more money. In the end if the infection
persists the tooth will need to be extracted and you could have done this from the
start and not be out of several thousand dollars, but as mentioned their have been
several folks who have not had any problem with their root canals, guess it comes
down to plain old luck.
My main thing is that either way I really don't want this to interfere with my backpacking
2014 season.
Several years ago met a dentist who was camping near LeConte ranger station. He
had cracked a tooth and was in some extreme pain, he was planning to abort his
JMT hike and exit over Bishop Pass the next morning. Don't know why he did not
carry any pain killers, especially as a dentist, but remembering that incident makes
me want to make the best decision possible.