Blog

If you allow dental caries (i.e., decay) to progress so far as to come into close proximity to your tooth pulp or into your tooth pulp, you most likely will require root canal therapy to save this tooth. The tooth’s dental pulp contains numerous tissues and cell types that will require removal if your London dentist decides that this tooth needs a root canal. Bacteria or their end products will cause the pulp of the tooth to die, and the pulp will have to be cleaned out and instrumented properly in order to properly sterilize the tooth’s canals. You may need to receive antibiotics prior to the root canal therapy, depending on whether the tooth can be treated at that time and anesthetised properly. There have been times when the tooth is so infected that the dentist or endodontist has difficulty numbing the tooth. Do not let your tooth infection to get this bad! Seek help as soon as possible!
When performing root canal therapy, your tooth will be anesthetised and the tooth will be isolated from the fluids in your mouth, in order not to contaminate the root canals while they are being cleaning out and treated. A drill is used to drill an access opening, and then different drills, files, broaches, and sterile chemicals will be used to clean out all of the infected soft and hard tissue from within the canals. The tooth’s root canals will then be filled with gutta percha, and a temporary filling will be placed in the tooth to keep the tooth clean. The dental pain usually subsides in less than 24 hours. Some type of full coverage restoration will be performed at a future date on this tooth to keep it from completely breaking down.