Hearing from the dentist: “Your tooth is for root canal treatment” , many patients are terrified and immediately imagine a painful procedure in the dentist's chair. What is this treatment about and should we be concerned about it?

Each tooth is made of pulp. It is a tissue located in a special chamber inside our tooth. It consists of, among others, vessels, nerves and cells. When there is a deep cavity and the caries reaches the inside of our tooth, the pulp becomes inflamed. Bacteria reach it and destroy it. The patient may then feel acute pain. The only rescue for such a tooth is the removal of infected tissue. After thorough cleaning, we replace it with another similar biocompatible material that will be able to fill the healed tooth cavity. This is what endodontic treatment is all about - removing the infected tissue, proper preparation of the canals located in the tooth roots and their preparation so that the tooth can then be tightly filled with pulp replacement material. This allows avoiding reinfection, i.e. re-infection of the tooth.

There can be many causes of pulpitis, but the most common of them is tooth decay. That is why it is so important to take care of the condition of the oral cavity and prevent the formation of cavities - the so-called holes.

Currently, root canal treatment is a painless procedure. All treatments are performed under local anesthesia. The patient lies on the dentist's chair and does not feel the pain that scares him the most. Depending on the acuteness of inflammation of the tooth, an appropriate number of visits is needed. However, most often for such treatment, we need one, two or three visits with our dentist. The treatment is carried out under magnification - the dentist uses a microscope and places a rubber dam on the tooth, which insulates against saliva and protects our oral cavity from fluids and other materials used during the treatment.

Root canal treatment is a method of the future, thanks to which we can keep our teeth in the mouth for a long time. It allows healing a tooth whose nerves and vessels are damaged by bacteria. Thanks to endodontics, we do not have to remove our own teeth, grapple with missing teeth in the mouth, complexes, difficulties in eating, as well as expensive prosthetic and implantological treatment. Endodontic treatment is a procedure that gives us a lot of possibilities, protects against the final treatment, which is extraction or removal of a sick tooth. It increases the lifetime of our teeth and allows enjoying our own smile for a long time.

Author:
Doctor Oktawia Zacharek
A specialist in conservative dentistry and endodontics