The Benefits and Risks of Root Canals: What You Need to Know
August 1, 2023
If you have a damaged, severely decayed, or infected tooth, your dentist might recommend a root canal. The treatment has a fearsome reputation, but the procedure targets the narrow openings at the tooth roots called canals containing the nerves, blood vessels, and connective tissue, providing sensation and nutrients to teeth during the developmental stages. The nerves are unnecessary after the tooth develops because it receives nourishment from other sources.
If you accept your dentist’s proposal to have root canal treatment in Welland, ON, the therapy entails removing an infection inside your tooth, affecting the dental pulp and resealing the area. Root canal treatments are incredibly successful and do not cause pain despite the belief that they are painful.
Although root canals are successful, some risks are involved in the treatment. It is essential to understand them beforehand to ensure you receive the therapy without stress to help the dentist preserve your natural tooth. This blog explains the benefits and risks of receiving root canal therapy to improve your dental health by eradicating a severe infection inside your tooth.
The Benefits and Risks of Root Canals
Root Canal Benefits
- Helpful to Save a Natural Tooth: Root canals help preserve a severely damaged or infected tooth, enabling you to keep natural teeth. The therapy to save your natural tooth prevents jawbone loss after tooth loss. If you refuse a root canal to eliminate the infection, the only alternative is to extract the tooth and look for replacement solutions to close the void between your teeth.
- Eliminates Tooth Pain: Infected dental pulp causes excruciating pain in the specific tooth besides temperature sensitivity, fever, facial swelling and radiating pain to the head and jaw. Alleviating the pain using over-the-counter painkillers is challenging. Although the pain may subside, it returns with ferocity to make you schedule an appointment with your dentist, even if dental anxiety affects you. When you receive root canal services from the Welland provider, the therapy helps eliminate the pain you experience from your infected tooth to put you on the path to enjoying your life without discomfort.
- Prevents Misalignments: when you prefer to preserve your natural tooth with root canals instead of extraction, you will likely avoid misalignments in your mouth from forming because of the void between your teeth. Tooth extractions will encourage your remaining teeth to drift towards the gap making orthodontic treatments essential besides expensive tooth replacement solutions.
Root Canal Risks
- Tooth Weakening: Root canals can weaken a tooth because the dentist must drill the tooth to expose the infected dental pulp and the canals. The drilling weakens the tooth structure even after the dentist seals and fills the tooth with a temporary filling making further fortification essential. Dentists recommend strengthening the tooth with a dental crown to restore its functionality, appearance and strength. The restoration helps biting forces, aesthetics, and mouth functionality.
- Might Entail Multiple Dental Visits: Root canals on anterior teeth are completed by dentists in one visit as the front teeth merely have one canal. Unfortunately, dentists may split the treatment into two visits if you need a root canal on a molar with multiple canals. The infection inside your tooth and the number of canals determine whether the dentist can complete the treatment in one or two visits. Occasionally dentists apply antibiotics to the tooth twice before sealing it to prevent reinfection.
The Welland dentist can help preserve your infected natural tooth causing excruciating pain to disallow you to concentrate on other activities by performing a root canal to provide the benefits described above. Therefore it helps if you overlook the risks of this treatment and accept the dentist’s proposal to receive a root canal to remove the infection inside the tooth.
While root canals are painless because of the adequate anesthesia you receive when undergoing the treatment, you can experience discomfort when the anesthesia wears off. However, you receive prescriptions for painkillers and antibiotics to alleviate pain and prevent infections to help you heal from the endodontic procedure within a week or ten days.
You require one last appointment with the Welland dentist for tooth restoration with a dental crown to fortify your tooth for full functionality and aesthetics.
If Rose City Dental Center advises a root canal to eliminate an infection inside your tooth, kindly accept the proposal because it helps save your natural tooth. Although root canals have a painful reputation with some risks, their benefits should encourage you to receive this treatment from these dentists.