Root canals have a bad reputation. Part of the reason for that is in the past the technology and the materials that we used to have weren’t the best. Now with the advancements in endodontics and dentistry we’re able to perform root canals in a painless manner.
Root canals are mainly designed to stop pain not cause it. A lot of offices don’t perform root canal procedures. We do perform root canal procedures here and we have the proper equipment and training for example like a CT scan to be able to allow us to perform some of the more complex root canal procedures.
A lot of my patients like that because they’re able to get all their work done in one place and not have to go to different offices. So for root canals a lot of my patients especially the ones who have higher anxiety or have had a bad experience in the past getting a root canal we offer IV sedation and that helps get them extremely comfortable and allows them to get the root canal that they need. It’s important to treat an infected tooth of the root canal because if we don’t that infection in the tooth can spread elsewhere in the body and can make you sick.
By doing the root canal we’re removing the infection that is inside that tooth or sometimes that has even spread to the jawbone and that helps prevent it from spreading elsewhere. A lot of people confuse a root canal and a crown. A root canal is essentially just removing infection from inside of the tooth whereas a crown is the cap or the covering that goes over the actual tooth itself so that way it’s protected and so that the the root canal is sealed.
Not every tooth that meets a crown needs a root canal. I often hear that from patients. Sometimes we’re able to remove a cavity or remove cracks from a teeth and just cover it with a crown and we don’t always necessarily need to do a root canal just because we’re doing a crown.
