What treatment to choose? Any dentists about?

[Nobhobs]

I had a root canal on a canine many moons ago and it went slightly grey, as times gone on it's gotten darker and darker and is now practically black.

I've been for a consultation and my options are either a peg and a crown, or internal and external bleaching. The dentist recommended the bleaching as I'm quite young still and he didn't want to ruin the tooth but he did warn as it's so dark it may not work. Also due to the severity of the darkness I would have to have it re bleached every few years.

I don't have the money for recurrent bleaching, so I'm leaning towards the crown. As I've just had a baby they said it'll be covered on the NHS and will last 10 years. My concern is I'm swaying towards it due to financial reasons. He did say a crown on a canine tooth may be more susceptible to breaking.

Anyone had one? Any idea?

A crown will be more damaging than bleaching and if a post crown then when it fails it is often catastrophic and is only able to be extracted, bleaching doesn’t damage any more of the remaining tooth but is unpredictable. Canines are usually darker than the other anterior teeth so if the bleaching isn’t 100% it often doesn’t matter as much.

I would go with bleaching

And NHS crown can look quite dull/grey anyway and a canine is quite a prominent tooth. And even with a nice private crown the grey of the tooth would shine through.

Crowning a canine tooth can be quite complex as well as a canine takes a lot of force of your bite. Post crowning a canine which it sounds like the dentist is offering could lead to it breaking at below gum level and then you've got no tooth to work with, and it needs to come out. Then your left with a gap, and because it's a canine again it's complex to restore.

If it were my tooth I would 100% go with the bleaching. Then reassess. If it really needs a crown then for best aesthetic result you would want to carry out internal/external bleaching first anyway, and if it's needs redoing you should only need to pay for the additional bleach not the full course again.

There's no point going for an NHS post crown, which won't give a fantastic aesthetic result anyway and can lead to you potentially losing your tooth when you can have bleaching. Which okay may not completely remove the blackness but at least you've got a full tooth to work with if more treatment is needed