TL;DR
Endodontic care treats the pulp inside a tooth: root canal therapy when it’s infected or dying, and diagnosis and repair when a tooth has cracked. At Stone Falls Dental Care the aim is to keep your own tooth whenever it can be kept, and to tell you plainly when it can’t. Most back teeth that have had a root canal need a crown afterward to protect them.
What does endodontic treatment do?
It removes damaged pulp and seals the tooth so it can stay. Deep decay, a crack, a large old filling or a hard knock can let bacteria into the pulp chamber or injure the nerve. The tooth may ache, react to hot and cold long after the drink is gone, or turn darker. Sometimes it hurts very little, and an infection shows up on an X-ray before you feel anything.
In root canal therapy the inflamed or infected tissue is cleaned out of the canals, which are then shaped, disinfected, filled and sealed. The tooth is numbed throughout, and for most people the visit feels much like having a filling. Afterward the tooth no longer has a living nerve, but it keeps its root in the bone and goes on chewing.
How do we decide whether a tooth can be saved?
We test it, image it and look at what’s left. Dr. Prane checks how the tooth responds to cold and to tapping, reads the X-rays for infection at the root tip and looks for cracks, sometimes with an intraoral camera so you can see them too. A cracked tooth is its own case: a crack that stays above the gum can often be held together with a crown, while one that runs down the root usually can’t.
When a tooth can be kept, we’ll usually recommend keeping it, since a natural root is hard to improve on. When it can’t, we explain the replacement options before anything is removed. Root canals and the crowns that follow are among the major treatments the practice has discounted for new patients; see the current offers. If you’re in pain right now, read our dental emergencies page and call.