No dental surgery is more feared than the dreaded root canal treatment. The sound of the dentist drill is synonymous with this eye-watering procedure. That’s the perceived impression anyway, but the reality is somewhat different. A root canal treatment is one of the most important procedures in dentistry. It can make the difference between saving a tooth and losing it. More importantly, if you ask anybody who has suffered form an infected tooth, they will tell you just how painful it can be and how much of a relief it is when a root canal brings an end to that pain. So ignore the drill and the horror stories and give the root canal a little credit.
Root canals are necessary when a dental cavity has penetrated to the root of the tooth which has then become infected. The pulp, or dentine, inside the tooth is eaten away by the infection, which then sets to work on the ultra-sensitive nerve endings in the middle of the tooth. A root canal enables the dentist to get inside the tooth and remove all the infected material and the nerve endings, to bring and end to the infection and the pain. If allowed to develop the pain might stop when the nerve ending is dead but the infection can spread to other teeth and even into the bloodstream. You will also be left with a dead tooth that will more than likely drop out at some point.
The whole procedure will take place under a local anaesthetic which should make it no more painful than any other type of filling. When the infection has been removed and cleaned up, the dentist will then fill the cavity with a mix of resin and medicine to prevent the infection returning. The rest of the cavity is filled and then a crown usually placed over the top to help maintain the strength of the tooth.
The patient may experience some pain or numbness for a few days after the procedure but this will pass and can be treated with over-the-counter painkillers. The root canal treatment has a bad reputation, which may have something to do with how operations were performed in the past. But in the present and the availability of the latest technology, the root canal is a standard procedure and one that might save you a lot of pain. If you are suffering from toothache or think you may have an infection, as a City of Leeds dentist about root canal treatments.
Tags: dentine, infected tooth, pulp, root canal treatment, saving tooth
