The root canal is one of the most common treatments employed by a dentist to treat an infected or a damaged tooth or a dental abscession. If your tooth has developed a deep cavity and is broked with the surrounding gum region inflamed, your dentist will prescribe root canal treatment for you.
Despite the popularity of the treatment, many people still shy away from it. There can be various factors behind this reluctance –either they don’t know what exactly a root canal treatment is or they are scared that it is painful and dangerous. Before we get into why root canal treatment is an ideal treatment for an infected tooth, let’s go through what the root canal treatment is.
What is root canal treatment?
As mentioned above, root canal treatment is a method of treating an infected tooth with a cavity, is broken, or has abscission. A root canal occurs in the following steps: removing the crown, cleansing the pulp of the tooth, and re-crowning. The dentist first numbs your tooth by applying the right amount of anesthesia.
After that, the upper crown of the tooth is removed to make a route to the tooth’s soft pulp. Using a needle known as the endodontic file, the dentist then carefully cleanses the damaging pulp or removes the bacterial build-up. After cleansing, the dentist then fills the cavity with a temporary filling material such as gutta-percha. This filling is done to ensure that no further infection occurs.
How longs the cavity should remain sealed with the temporary filling material depends on your dentist? A dentist in Los Angeles would suggest that the cavity be covered with a permanent covering as soon as possible. After filling the cavity with gutta-percha for some time, the temporary coating is removed, and a permanent crown that resembles the real tooth is placed on it. The crowning is then cemented with permanent dental glue.
Why is root canal treatment necessary?
Dentists always prefer root canal over tooth extraction, which is another common way of dealing with infected or damaged teeth because of its long term effect.
Where tooth extraction may end the pain, it does not ensure the end of the infection, which might integrate deep into the gums. Also, tooth extraction leaves a void in your jaw, causing discomfort in biting and chewing in the future.
However, the root canal is not the first choice of a dentist if your tooth is just slightly affected. If the cavity is not extremely deep, and the tooth’s pulp is not affected, the dentist would fill in the cavity. Even if the pulp has just started to get inflamed, the dentist would prefer antibiotics and general filling over the root canal.
The root canal is only advisable in conditions where the tooth’s inner pulp is highly inflamed, there is an abscess, or the tooth is decaying and breaking.