To make a long story short, I had two crowns peformed by Dr Lopp and the crew at Gateway Dental. After pressure-selling me all the advantages of CEREC crowns, I had to wait a week to get my permanent crowns (same day turnaround was part of the sales pitch) with very poorly fitted temporary crowns that put my whole jaw out of alignment and gave me an excrutiating headache...when I called I was told I couldn't get in for an adjustment until the day before I was to get my permanent crowns. So for the entire week I had to take over 3000 mg of motrin per day just to function. After the permanent CEREC crowns were installed, I had terrible headaches and tooth pain that persisted even after FIVE adjustments by Dr Lopp, who finally told me I'd have to wait it out for a few months until it healed. After EIGHT MONTHS in pain, I eventually had to get root canals on both molars. When I went to another dentist, who was a family friend in Los Angeles, he looked at the crowns and said that they were poorly designed resulting in a poor fit and that, had they been, I probably would not have suffered or needed the root canals. And, come to think of it, I didn't get the impression that the person operating the CAD program to design my crown at Carlsbad really knew what they were doing - and they had little oversight - that's probably why it took a week to get them made. I'd like to add that the crown that was replaced by the second doctor's staff fit perfectly with NO adjustments, and that the technician was obviously very skilled and knew exactly what he was doing (the dentist said he trains other technicians around the country in the use of the CAD/CAM software and milling machine). There were a number of other issues, which I posted in my review on Yelp but will omit here. if you go to Yelp, be sure you read the filtered reviews by clicking on the link at the bottom of the reviews page. There are many bad experiences from various people. Do not support this practice! If you had a similar experience with this practice, make sure you FILE A FORMAL COMPLAINT with the CA dentistry board at www.dbc.ca.gov/formspubs/form_complaint.pdf
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