Thoughtful treatments designed around your goals, comfort, and long-term oral health.
A root canal treats the pulp — the nerve in the middle of a tooth — once trauma or infection has damaged it. The aim is to settle the infection and keep the tooth rather than lose it.
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Is This You
Root canal treatment comes up for a handful of reasons. These are the common ones.
01
Pain that seems to come from inside a tooth points toward the pulp — the nerve in the middle of it. A nerve damaged by trauma or by infection is what puts a tooth in line for this treatment.
02
Decay works inward. Once bacteria penetrate the tooth and reach the pulp, the trouble sits inside it rather than on the surface, and a filling no longer reaches it.
03
An abscess is an infection, and decay is one route a tooth takes to one. What is driving it sits inside the tooth, not on the outside.
04
A tooth can die slowly after an old injury that seemed to need nothing done at the time. Aging can bring a tooth to the same place.
05
A chip or a fracture can leave the nerve exposed, and that exposure is one of the common reasons this treatment comes up.
06
Nerves are a common reason a sore tooth gets left alone. Delay is the risk: an infection in one tooth can spread to others.
The Options
No two root canals are alike. How involved one gets depends on how many canals the tooth has, what shape they are in, and whether it has been treated before. Whether a given tooth is treated in general practice or referred on is a judgment made after examination.
Front teeth generally have a single canal inside them. That puts them at the simpler end of the range.
Molars carry several canals rather than one. Those canals can also be calcified, curved, obstructed, or hard to get access to. All of that makes a back tooth a more demanding job than a front one.
A tooth treated this way before can give trouble again. Re-treatment is the name for going at that same tooth a second time, and it counts as a more complex case than a first attempt.
Some cases are complex enough to call for root canal microsurgery. It is not the ordinary route, and whether a tooth calls for it is judged case by case.
Taking the tooth out is the other way of ending the infection. It settles the problem in that tooth, but it leaves a gap, and the gap becomes its own decision further down the line.
Before Anything Begins
The consultation comes first, whatever you are here about. It costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
The Money Part
The consultation is free and there is no obligation. You leave with the cost in writing before anything is booked, so the decision is yours to make away from the chair.
If a plan turns out not to be for you, that is a perfectly good outcome of a consultation.
Quick Questions
If yours isn’t here, the consultation is the place for it — or call and ask.
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No — it is the treatment used to avoid that. It is the route to keeping a tooth that would otherwise have to come out. Whether a particular tooth can be kept is a call a dentist makes after examining it.
It does not clear up on its own. Antibiotics can take the swelling down for a while, but that deals with the inflammation rather than the cause of it, which is inside the tooth.
Treatment is confined to the inside of the one tooth, and the rest of the mouth is not harmed by it. Infection is the thing that does not stay put, which is the reason for dealing with it rather than waiting.
The point of keeping a tooth is that it stays in the bite and carries on doing its job. A crown is sometimes fitted over a treated tooth, where what remains of it needs protecting. Whether that applies to a given tooth is a separate assessment.
Sometimes. Decay caught early can still be a filling; the same decay caught late may narrow the choice to a root canal or an extraction. That is the argument for check-ups rather than waiting for pain.
Also At This Practice
No Cost, No Obligation
About an hour with Dr. Duaa. A scan, straight answers, and a written plan you take home.
Parking at the door. Nothing is treated on the day, and there is nothing to sign.
