Endodontics
What is a Root canal therapy?
It is a delicate process of cleaning, medicating and filling the root canal of a tooth . In doing so, infected and dead nerve (pulp) tissue is replaced with and inert root filling to allow healing of existing wound and prevent future infection.
Why root canal therapy?
Root canal therapy is frequently needed to eliminate the source of pain and infection in an aching tooth. Without proper treatment, the infection can spread down toward the surrounding jaw bone surrounding the root tip, becoming acute dental abscess or facial swelling with severe pain. Frequently, other treatment alternative for such conditions is a tooth extraction which is easy to do but difficult to reverse. Surrounding teeth will lose function and slowly over-erupted add tip down into the empty extraction space.
Other Conditions where root canal therapy may be required are retreatment of existing root fillings due to bacterial leakage or incomplete treatment. Occasionally, elective root canal therapy is needed to prevent complications or retain the restoration. The clinical conditions should be discussed with you by your doctor before the treatment.
During the treatment
There should be Pain-free, as profound local anesthetic will be used. However supplemental anesthetic may be needed occasionally. So if you have experience any pain or discomfort during the treatment, please let your doctor know.
After the first visit
Your tooth could be slightly tender to biting and only mild pain can be expected for 2-3 days. Normal Pain-killer should be adequate for these conditions. On rare occasions (about 5 % Chance), some non-vital teeth can cause severe pain and swelling after the first root canal visit. If this occurs, please contact us as soon as possible for emergency treatment.
After the treatment
Many root canals treated teeth needed to be crowned due to the severely damaged from dental decay, frequently just the shell of such teeth are left. Restoring a severely damaged tooth back to health may require a post-core before crowning the tooth. The treatment will restore the appearance and help prevent tooth fracturing during normal usage.
CASE
TOOTH FRACTURE
A 9-year-old boy came to our clinic with his mom because of the upper right incisor fracture from falling onto the ground. His mom kept the part of the tooth in a bottle of milk and came to us immediately.
Almost half of the tooth fractured and there was a pinpoint pulpal exposure. The x-ray showed incompleted root formation.
The treatment was partial pulpotomy under endodontic microscope to remove infected pulp while preserving the vitality of the remaining root canal. Then, the tooth was restored by resin composite (tooth-coloured filling material).
We followed-up for 1 year to check for any signs of tooth non-vitality and the need of root canal treatment.