What is Root Canal Therapy?

What is Root Canal Therapy?

6th October 2015 - 8:30 pm


Why do I feel pain?

Why do I need root canal therapy?

What is a root canal procedure?
A root canal is a procedure done to save the tooth by cleaning out the diseased pulp and reshaping the canal. The canal is filled with gutta percha, a rubberlike material, to prevent recontamination of the tooth. The tooth is then permanently sealed with a metal or porcelain crown. This enables patients to keep the original tooth.

What is involved in root canal therapy?
Once your general dentist performs tests on the tooth and recommends therapy, he or she can perform the treatment or refer you to an endo-dontist (a pulp specialist).Treatment usually involves one to three appointments.


If you’re given a temporary filling, usually on the next visit it’s removed and the pulp chamber and canal (s) are filled with rubber like gutta percha or another material to prevent recontamination. Once filled, the area is permanently sealed. Finally, a crown is normally placed over the tooth to strengthen its structure and improve appearance.

What are the risks and complications?
More than 70 percent of root canal treatments are successful. However, sometimes a case needs to be redone due to diseased canal offshoots that went unnoticed. Any tooth may have more than one canal, which may be missed while performing the root canal. Sometimes the canal may be unusually shaped, making it impossible to fill it completely, so that some infected material is still left in the canal. Sometimes the canal filling does not extend deeply enough into the canal, or it does not fill the canal as much as it should. Sometimes a tooth root may be perforated while the root canal is being performed, making it difficult to fill the tooth. Occasionally, a root canal therapy will fail altogether, marked by a return of pain.
Claims have been made that it is impossible to fully sterilize a tooth internally, or fill it in a perfectly inert biocompatible permanent fashion. There is an ongoing risk of infection, which may pose dangers to the rest of the body. Unfortunately, there is generally no satisfactory alternative. Pulling the tooth leaves a gap which poses both aesthetic and functional problems, and endangers the structure of the adjacent teeth.
What happens after treatment?

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