Find Out Why Our Root Canals Are So Comfortable
When I say root canal to patients or if, you know, other people hear it, it’s like, “Oh shoot, that’s a big word. I don’t want to get a root canal,” or even like patients who have never had it, they’re like, “Oh, root canal. Stay away from that, right?” It’s actually very simple. So a root canal is indicated if you have a cavity that’s gone into the nerve of the tooth, which causes a lot of pain, hypersensitive, wakes you up at night, lingering pain. So that’s when it’s indicated. It’s actually a very simple procedure.
So what we do, of course, is we numb you really well, make sure the tooth is isolated. And I go in there, remove the decay, and in the process of removing that decay and cavity, I get into the nerve because that’s where, you know, that’s it’s gone there already, right? So I just go in there with my little files, clean it out, get the nerve out, irrigate it really well, and that’s pretty much it.
After that, of course, we don’t want to leave the canal really hollow. So we want to make sure we put something in there, pretty much like a filling. It’s called gutta-percha. After that, we build up the tooth backup, put a filling on it, we call it like a build-up, just like a big filling. And if it’s a back tooth, a posterior molar, a premolar tooth, we always ask or we always tell patients or recommend them to put a crown on them because, of course, after a root canal, the tooth becomes very weak. And we want to make sure that the root canal is worth it by putting a crown on it and making sure that the tooth, you know, lasts for as many years as it can. For front teeth, we don’t really have to do a crown on them unless it’s a big decay. We can access it from the back.
So it’s a big word, but it’s actually very simple. Get in there, remove the decay, clean out the canals, put a build-up crown on it. That’s pretty much it.