What is Endodontic Therapy?
Endodontic treatment, also known as root canal therapy, stems from “endo” meaning “inner” in Greek. Endodontic treatment removes the nerve from the tooth’s inner canal and de-vitalizes the tooth, slowly allowing the body to heal any inflammation, infection or pain. Sometimes, symptoms may not be present.
Why you might need Endodontic Therapy
- Largely fractured/cracked tooth or restoration
- Tooth decay that has reached the nerve and causing pain (painful symptoms may include: sensitivity to hot/cold and/or to biting force; head/face/ear aches; swollen lymph nodes in neck)
- Trauma to the tooth
Key Benefits of Endodontic Therapy
- Remove source of pain
- Remove any potential infectious and inflammatory source
- Correct discoloration of tooth
Process
Endodontic therapy can tend to be on an emergency basis, in which case, treatment will be initiated day-of in order to get you out of pain as quickly as possible. Before beginning treatment, the tooth will be evaluated thoroughly and isolated to ensure source of pain, infection, or discoloration is related to the root canal of a specific tooth. Radiographs will be taken for evaluation.
Depending on the nerve’s status found upon evaluation, the root canal may take 1 or 2 appointments to complete.
The first appointment consists of removing all decay, accessing the root canals and cleaning the canals from nerve and debris. Should the tooth need 2 appointments for completion, at this point, a medicament will be placed in each canal to ensure time for anti-bacterial effects to occur and the access openings of the canals will be temporarily sealed. After 1-2 weeks, you will return to finish the root canal. At this time, the canals would be re-opened and filled with filler cone material. The access openings would then be closed and sealed off permanently, at which the root canal would be finished.
For more information about root canals, or to make an appointment , call our office at (202) 965-0333.