Does getting a root canal sound really painful to you? Do you think you really need it? Why do you need it? Let’s take a look at a few commonly asked questions on root canals. What is a root canal and do I really need one?
Each tooth contains a sensitive living center called as a nerve. When your decay has finished burrowing through the entire tooth it then reaches the sensitive central living tissue and then starts irritating it. Ultimately due to the constant irritants the nerve just dies and rots away. The dead nerve and pus accumulate inside the tooth and generally cause flare ups every month with severe swelling and pain. In a root canal procedure the dentist will excavate the entire dead nerve, pus and leaves behind a hollow sterile pipe of the tooth. He then strengthens this hollow dead structure with a central filling of a really hard material and covers it with a cap to protect it.

What are the signs of needing endodontic treatment or a root canal?
When the decay reaches the central nerve of the tooth, you will experience severe pain swellings, sensitivity to heat or cold, discoloration of the tooth, etc

Does a root canal save a tooth?
Definitely, a retained tooth is much better than losing your natural tooth. After the root canal procedure the tooth does become really brittle so you have to be slightly careful on eating hard and sticky food. Otherwise a well-done root canal lasts for a really long, long, time.

I can recall the feelings of my patients at the utterance of the root canal. They would be just horrified and I guess if they were given a choice of run or stay, they would be running away without any exception. However, if the dentists are more competent, half of the root canal treatments can be avoided and instead a pulp capping would suffice.

Whether or not tooth decay warrants a root canal is sometimes puzzling to even a competent dentist; however, if the dentist can carefully drill and see through the depth of the decay, he would find the nerve alive and in that case he opts out of RCT. If it’s dead a root canal is warranted though. A filling or pulp cap is enough to fix the problem when the nerve is intact.

Pulp cap is a dental procedure wherein the dentist drills and goes to nerve level when removing decay. The exposed nerve, which can be regarded as pulp, would then be capped or covered after the decay has been removed and cleaned from the cavity. The procedure is regarded as a conservative treatment and the cavity would be filled with bonded composite technique and there is no calcium hydroxide layer unlike in the earlier days. The success rate of this procedure is high as well as the treatment also lasts for long time period. If the patient is rightly picked for the procedure, it’s almost successful.

By pulp capping your dentist is trying to keep the decayed tooth alive besides avoiding a need for the much-painful ouchie root-canal treatment. Pulp capping has been an old procedure, however, newer techniques and materials are evolving to make a person more comfortable.