Root Canal Therapy

Tooth Decay can be prevented

The accumulation of plaque is the culprit behind gum disease and tooth decay. In the case of tooth decay, the bacteria in plaque produce acid that destroys the enamel of your teeth to form cavities.

Finding cavities is sometimes easy, but it can be difficult. For hard-to-find cavities, we use a dental explorer to check the tops and sides of your teeth. X-rays are used to look for cavities between teeth. Metal fillings and crowns show up as bright white; cavities look like dark spots.

The graphic shows the progression of tooth decay starting with a small cavity, followed by a larger cavity that if not dectected in time, can penetrate the dentin layer to infect the pulp chamber of your tooth.

It's far better to catch and restore cavities while they're still small and in the enamel layer of the tooth. Once they're in the softer dentin layer, they grow very quickly. If they make it to the pulp chamber, the decay can progress to a whole new set of problems: root canals.

The dental profession has assigned each tooth a number and every surface of a tooth a letter. If we find cavities in your teeth, you'll hear us call out the numbers and letters for each one. Of course, if you keep the plaque off your teeth, you'll never need to know about these numbers and letters!

A dark-coloured tooth usually indicates that the nerve of the tooth has become infected and the normal flow of blood in and out of the tooth has stopped. Root canals can also be needed as a result of trauma from sport injuries or automobile accidents that damage the nerve inside the tooth root.

In most cases, the tooth will need a root canal. Sometimes the tooth will "die," yet not need a root canal. To restore the tooth to its natural colour, you might consider bonding, veneers, a crown, or single-tooth whitening –a procedure in which a whitening agent is placed inside the tooth after root canal treatment.

The Root Canal Procedure

Most people have pre-conceived notions that a root canal is filled with pain and discomfort. In fact, root canal therapy doesn’t cause pain. It actually relieves it! Advances in dental technology have made root canal therapy virtually a pain-free experience.

Once the pulp of a tooth has become infected, your choices are limited. An extraction is only a short-term solution. While it does remove the source of infection, it sets off a chain reaction of shifting teeth, bone loss and other dental problems.

The only way to save your tooth and keep it in your mouth is to remove the infection with root canal treatment. The tooth is then restored with a crown to prevent fractures, especially if it’s a molar or a premolar tooth.