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Root Canals

How Can I tell If  I need a Root Canal?

  • A Root Canal is needed if you have an abscessed tooth.

  • An Abscessed tooth would generally have the following Symptoms:

    • The main give away is a tooth that hurts All By Itself. Meaning you are not eating, clenching, or putting anything cold or hot on it and the tooth is aching. 

    • Sometimes this will wake you up at night​

    • Sometimes a tooth that wakes you up at night may NOT be abscessed, but it may hurt, and wake you up, because you are clenching or grinding your teeth in your sleep.

  • Other symptoms of a possibly abscessed tooth MAY include:​​​

    • ​The tooth hurts when chewing, or possibly just by touching it with your finger or tongue

    • The tooth my have a sharp pain to cold temperatures that continues to hurt for over 10 seconds after the cold is taken off of the tooth

    • The tooth may have a sharp pain to hot temperatures - and sipping cold water may help it feel better​

  • Sometimes an Abscessed Tooth will be VERY painful for a few days, and then go away. This pain is likely to come back in a few days or weeks if the Abscessed Tooth is not delt with​

  • An abscessed tooth will often show up on a dental x-ray as having a shadow around the root of the tooth

  • There are many reasons that teeth can hurt, please see the full discussion on Dental Pain for other reasons your tooth may hurt.​​​

What causes my tooth to need a Root Canal?

There are 4 main reasons why a tooth may require a Root Canal.

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1) A cavity that got to the nerve

2) A crack that got to the nerve

3) A filling or crown is done on a tooth that had a cavity or a crack that was very CLOSE to the nerve. This may result in "root canal pain" a few days or weeks after the tooth was worked on. 

4) Trauma to a tooth can damage a nerve, and  the tooth may need to have a root canal done.

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What is a Root  Canal?

The nerve of a tooth is in the center of the root of the tooth (or the center of each of the roots of a tooth for back teeth that have 2 or 3 roots).

 

When a Root Canal is done, a small hole is made through the top of the tooth to get to the nerve. The nerve is then removed from the tooth, and a plastic material (called Gutta Percha) is placed in the space the nerve was.

 

A filling is placed in the top portion of the tooth where the hole was made to get to the nerve space. On a back tooth, a crown is placed over the whole tooth to prevent the tooth from cracking.  

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Where do I go for a Root Canal?

I generally have you see a Root Canal Specialist (called and Endodontist) to have your root canal done.

 

I used to do Root Canals regularly because I thought I was saving my patients money. Then I realized that my cost for a root canal was the same as the cost at the specialist office (because I take about 3-4 times as long to do a root canal as a specialist, so our cost end up being the same). So now I have the specialist do them. Lets face it, if it is all they do all day long they are going to be pretty good at doing it, and pretty quick at doing it.

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The Root Canals specialist that I refer to are in Winston-Salem, or Greensboro.

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Will I need a Crown after getting a Root Canal?

On front teeth a filling may be all that is needed after a Root Canal is done.

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On front teeth that have a large cavity, or a large previous filling, a crown may be needed after a Root Canal is done.

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On back teeth, a crown is recommended after a Root Canal is done, as research shows that back teeth tend to crack over time if a Root Canal is done without a crown being done after.

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Are Root Canals Safe?

In short, my opinion is  yes. I have one in my mouth. Thousands of Root Canals are done each year, and I have never seen a case where any sort of health issue can be truly tracked down to a root canal. The material used for Root Canals has under gone millions of dollars of testing and has been proven safe. 

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If you are interested, here is a page (by the National Root Canal specialist group) with multiple citations of the safety of Root Canals. The American Dental Association also states that Root Canals are safe here.

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All that being said, if you are not interested in doing a Root Canal, we can simply remove the tooth and either leave a space in your mouth, or do one of the tooth replacement options. 

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Do Root Canals Always Work?

No they don't. Nothing is perfect.

 

In my experience the largest reason a Root Canal tooth does not last long term is because there really was not enough tooth to work with in the first place. I am always up front with you with what I think will and will not work for your teeth. If it looks like there is really not enough "good tooth" left to save the tooth, I will recommend removing the tooth, rather than having a Root Canal (See Tooth Replacement Options here)

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Sometimes there are complications with the Root Canal precedure itself, and this causes the Root Canal not to work. Going to one of the Root Canal specialists that I recommend should have the chance of the Root Canal its self not working be minimized. The bottom line is, I will recommend for your tooth the same thing I would recommend for my tooth: that may be a Root Canal, or it might not. And in the end, the decision is 100% yours. 

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