With root canal dentistry, I think the biggest thing is patients have had a bad experience with a root canal in the past. That’s usually what I see with my patients is when they come in and they have a tooth that’s infected or a nerve that’s infected and we need to do a root canal, the biggest thing is fear. So they don’t want to do it because they’re scared because a previous root canal has gone bad or gotten infected again or there was pain during the root canal.
And that’s a common misconception that I try to explain to all my patients is when we’re doing the root canal itself, you shouldn’t feel anything. If you’re numb, you shouldn’t feel anything. And if you’re feeling something, then you’re not numb.
And that comes into play of whether or not the tooth is getting numb or not. If it’s not, then sometimes we place patients on antibiotics and we’ll bring them back for another appointment. We don’t like to continue the appointment if they’re not numb for it.
So we have to make sure that it’s a seamless appointment and it’s as if you’re getting a regular filling done, it should feel no different because you shouldn’t feel anything. And when it comes to dentistry, you shouldn’t feel anything as long as you’re numb. But with the root canal procedure in itself, it basically entails of removing the inner portion of the nerve inside of the root canal itself.
And every tooth varies with how many nerves there are inside of the tooth itself and depends on how severe the infection is. So sometimes we will complete the root canal the same day. Sometimes we’ll bring the patient back and finish the root canal another day, depending on how severe the infection is.
But usually whenever a cavity travels to the inner portion of the nerve, the top chamber of the nerve will get infected and then it’ll travel down to the root surface of the tooth inside of the root canals. And that’s when the tooth gets infected. And that’s when we need to do a root canal procedure in order to alleviate that pain and alleviate the infection and give that tooth the longest prognosis possible.
