Root Canal Therapy

Root canal therapy is required when the nerve that provides nutrients to your tooth either dies or is inflamed to a point that it causes continuous pain. A nerve can be damaged by bacteria that find their way into the nerve through a cavity or a fracture in a tooth. Sometimes large restorations can irritate a tooth enough to cause the nerve to become irreversibly inflamed and painful. Root canal treatments are also sometimes needed if a tooth has died slowly over years without causing pain but we notice that bone at the bottom of the root is being affected by the dying nerve and is slowing being dissolved by the body. This happens over many years and is not painful. It is your body’s way of knowing the tooth is harboring bacteria and viruses in its dead nerve space and is breaking bone down around the tooth to begin the extraction process naturally. By cleaning out the canal system and filling it with an inert sealer, the tooth becomes sterile and the body begins to heal. These slow or chronic scenarios are often only detectable by x-rays. It is also important to note that many times you may have referred pain in your mouth that originates from a completely different tooth but feels like some other unrelated tooth is hurting. These are tricky to isolate and requires an in depth understanding of dentistry and nerve pathways. Another interesting fact to note is that sometimes colds and sinus pressure may cause teeth to get inflamed and may replicate a situation that feels like a toothache but indeed is attributable to sinus pressure. Loving Dentistry works hand in hand with our endodontic team to provide state of the art microscopic root canal therapy that is precise and predictable for optimal treatment success.