What Is Root Canal Therapy?

We’ve all heard of the term root canal. If anything, it’s the “scariest word” in all of dentistry. At least to the layperson.

In fact, anytime you hear that someone is getting a root canal, the first things that pop to mind are extreme pain, a likely expensive procedure, and a lot of neglect to the tooth leading up to needing the root canal itself.

But what exactly is a root canal? We hear it often enough to recognize what’s going on, yet the specifics get a little hazy simply because people don’t actually talk about what it means to have a root canal.

Basically, root canal therapy is the best way to clear infections in a root canal. So, the root canal itself is a place where your teeth’s roots are at, and infection in the roots often occurs because of a deep cavity, which causes damage to the tissue in the roots.

So during the actual root canal procedure, your dentist will end up cleaning out the infected root canal and then they’ll seal it up to make sure you don’t have any future infections within your root canal.

But if it’s left untreated, an infected root canal can cause one or more of the following (not to mention a tooth that will fall out): swelling in the area, bone loss around the root, and even drainage that can seep into the gums and sometimes through the cheek.

The main thing to know is that there are two main types of root canal procedures.

Pulpectomy

Partial root canals are often in order depending on how far the infection itself actually spreads into your root canal. This procedure is called a pulpectomy, and it relieves your pain and allows for antibiotics to lessen the infection over time. Basically, you’ll make two trips to your dentist or endodontist. The first, they’ll give you antibiotics to reduce the infection. At the follow up appointment, they’ll actually remove the infected “pulp”, and clean and fill the infected canal afterwards.

Apicoectomy

This is the procedure that is used to save the tooth, and since it’s more dire, it usually means the infection has gone beyond the tip of the root. What happens is that your dentist or endodontist will remove a portion of the root tip as well as the infection itself. Once this tissue is removed and cleaned, the canal is filled with a material that is rubber like and seals your tooth from further bacteria and infection.