When tooth decay or other factors cause the pulp (nerve tissue) in your tooth to get infected, you will need to get a root canal treatment done. The circumstances for this ailment are actually scarier than the cure. Root canal actually has a 95% success rate and the entire process itself can be done painlessly. If there are any variations in the treatment milestones, you can always get the correct picture by taking x-rays. Only in the most severe of cases, an endodontist or specialist in root canal treatments needs to be consulted.
A root canal treatment is required when the tooth in question has a crack, is broken or has been damaged to the extent that the neglected cavity has gone through the tooth enamel and reached the underlying pulp tissue. To fix the situation, your dentist will clean, sterilize and disinfect the area around the tooth in question. Of course, you will be given local anaesthesia and won’t feel a thing. The tooth is surrounded by a rubber mat and cleaning and clearing out of the infected pulp is commenced. Once the infected tooth structure has been removed, the first stage of this procedure is over in approximately just one hour. Antibiotics are applied to the area and the tooth is sealed up.
This process is not as easy as it looks as the root structure of teeth is far from simple. Each root system has multiple openings into the tooth. Sometimes the canals are quite narrow with branches and hooks and therefore it requires some effort to access and clean out. In the second stage of a root canal treatment, your dentist will first thoroughly flush out your tooth and seal the root canals with latex filler covered by special cement. The same is used to cover up the access point of the tooth. This stage will also take approximately an hour.
While the procedure of root canal treatment is very effective in treating infected teeth, the one thing that dentists cannot emphasise enough is that with proper care and attention in the first place, a root canal would not have been needed at all.