Endodontics, from the Greek endo (inside) and odons (tooth), is a field of dentistry that deals with the tooth pulp and the tissues surrounding the root of a tooth. The pulp (containing nerves, and blood vessels) can become diseased or injured, and is often unable to repair itself; if it dies, endodontic treatment is required.
What Is The Function Of A Tooth’s Nerve Tissue?
Initially a tooth’s nerve tissue plays an important role in the formation and development of the tooth. Then, once the tooth has formed, the function of this tissue becomes one of helping to preserve the tooth’s health and vitality. The nerve tissue keeps the tooth supplied with nutrients and moisture. It also produces new tooth structure (reparative dentin) as is needed to help to wall off and protect the nerve from injury (such as advancing tooth decay and holes).
A tooth’s nerve tissue does provide a sensory function but this role is probably different from what you expect. Under normal circumstances the nerves inside our teeth provide us with very little information. Yes, when activated by extremes in pressure, temperature, or severe insult (such as a cracked tooth or advancing tooth decay) teeth do respond with a painful sensation. But under normal circumstances the nerves inside our teeth remain relatively “quiet.”
At this point you might be thinking that if you push on your tooth with a finger or close your teeth together you will feel a pressure sensation. Because of this you might assume that that sensation must come from the nerve inside the tooth. Well, in reality, that sensation comes from the nerves found in the ligament that binds the tooth to the jawbone, not from inside the tooth itself. This implies then, from a standpoint of the normal functions we perform with our teeth, that the presence of a live nerve inside a tooth is somewhat academic. If a tooth’s nerve tissue is present and healthy that’s wonderful, but if a tooth has had its nerve tissue removed as a part of root canal treatment then that’s fine too. You will never miss it.
What Is Root Canal Treatment?
Root canal therapy is a sequence of treatment for the pulp of a tooth whose end result is the elimination of infection and protection of the tooth from future infection. The tooth is considered infected when you feel any one of a number of symptoms.
These symptoms are:
- Pain when you eat or drink things.
- Constant pain like a dull ache. This is usually worse at night. This can be radiating.
- Intermittent pain.
- Pain on biting (because of decay, cracking, etc.)
This is usually caused by either extensive tooth decay, or existing large restorations. Traumatic incidents are also a fact (e.g. tooth breaks due to a blow).
To get your tooth out of pain (i.e. to clean the infection out of it) removal of the pulp tissue, is needed. This is carried out by creating an access hole from the top of the tooth into the nerve (pulp) chamber at the dentists.
The infected pulp is removed from the root canals by a number of different high tech instruments. Once this is done, the dentist fills the cavity with an inert material and seals up the opening.
If enough of the tooth has been damaged, or removed as a result of the treatment, a crown may be required.
Does Root Canal Therapy Hurt?
For most patients, root canal therapy is one of the most feared procedures in all of dentistry; however, at the Dentists by using the most modern root canal treatment techniques, it is mostly painless.
In the last ten to twenty years, there have been great innovations in the art and science of root canal treatment. At the Dentists, root canal therapy has become more automated and can be performed faster, thanks to advances in automated mechanical instrumentation of teeth and more advanced root canal filling methods.
One of these is using a Root tri auto ZX to remove the initial infected tissue instead of the more traditional “scraping techniques” using hand files.
