Root Canals
Portland, OR
 There are a lot of words that people don’t like to say - and “root canal” is one of those word groups. Root canals strike fear into the heart of dental patients everywhere. If you listen to commercials, you already know about all of the jokes surrounding root canals. There are even movies and sitcoms that use root canals as a joke. So many people have heard of root canals that people who never experienced them have heard of them and hated them. One of the biggest reasons people worry about root canals is because of the pain. If you are worried about the pain of a root canal, come meet our doctors at and let them talk to you about root canals, and why root canals can save your tooth from being lost.
What Is Root Canal Therapy?
While a lot of treatments in our offices have to do with the outside of your tooth, root canals focus on the inside of your tooth. The exterior of your tooth is made from dentin, which is a hard outer shell. The inside of your tooth is called the pulp. The tooth pulp contains a lot of tissues, blood and tooth nerves. Your inner tooth pulp allows your teeth to function properly. The pulp keeps your tooth healthy, which in turn means your gums and jawbones are healthy too. It is important to keep your gums healthy, free of gum disease.The tooth roots connect your tooth to the jawbone, which means they are very important.
If you’re lucky, your teeth will work amazingly for your whole life. Sometimes you may get a cavity in your tooth. If you don’t get your cavity fixed, it will continue to grow. Your small tooth hole will grow bigger and bigger with your cavity until it reaches your tooth pulp. Once it gets into your tooth pulp, it will cause an infection in your tooth. An infection in your pulp causes your tooth to grow very painful, and that infection can spread easily to other teeth. Root canal therapy offers you the opportunity to fix your tooth and save it from the cavity.
What Happens in Root Canal Therapy?
Once you come in for a root canal, we will get x-rays of your tooth, just so we can make sure of the extent of your infection. Then we will need to numb the area where your tooth is, which means you won’t feel any pain once we begin. The next step is for us to make an incision in the top of your tooth. That way, we can reach your tooth pulp. We have to remove your tooth pulp so that we can treat your infection. We do another check to make sure that the infection is completely gone. We then fill the space where your tooth pulp was, which means that the tooth is cleared of infection. The composite filling has antibiotic medication so that the tooth won’t get reinfected. Once the tooth is filled, we have to place a dental crown on the tooth, because we want the tooth to continue to be as strong as it possibly can be, so that it won’t break or crack.
Contact Us Today!
Do you have a painful tooth? Are you worried that you might need a root canal? We can help! Give Great Grins for KIDS - Portland a call at (971) 470-0054. For additional information on root canals, we have provided this helpful link from Medical News Today: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/142780#how_painful_is_it . |
