What to Expect During Root Canal Therapy

Root canal therapy often brings a sense of uncertainty, but understanding the process can ease concerns and make each step feel manageable. Designed to relieve pain and save a damaged or abscessed tooth from extraction, root canals involve our Grand Rapids dentists carefully removing the infection, preserving the natural tooth and restoring your oral health.

Here’s a breakdown of each stage of the root canal procedure so you can feel better informed walking into our office.

What Is Dental Pulp?

Dental pulp is the soft, living tissue located at the core of each tooth, housed in the innermost chamber, known as the pulp chamber. Composed of nerves, blood vessels, and connective tissue, dental pulp plays a crucial role in a tooth’s development and ongoing health. While it provides essential nutrients and sensory functions, dental pulp becomes vulnerable to damage if decay or trauma penetrates the outer layers of the tooth.

Read More → Tooth Pain: How to Tell When a Toothache Is Serious

It’s when a cavity progresses deep enough to reach the dental pulp, that it can lead to infection, intense pain, and inflammation, which may necessitate root canal therapy. This procedure allows our dentists to get rid of the infected pulp while still maintaining the structure of the tooth, helping to prevent further complications from arising and ultimately saving your smile.

Who Needs Root Canal Therapy?

If you’re suffering from a toothache, don’t ignore it. Tooth pain is your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. Ignoring a toothache for too long can turn a minor cavity into a dental emergency, requiring root canal therapy to save your tooth.

You may need root canal therapy if you have:

• Severe toothache
• Prolonged tooth sensitivity to cold or heat
• Tooth darkening
• Swollen, tender gums
• Dental abscess (looks like a pimple on the gums)

Please call our Grand Rapids dental office if you are experiencing any of the above symptoms. Our dentists can take a closer look to see what exactly you’re dealing with and will use their findings to determine the necessary form of treatment, if not a root canal.

Four Steps of a Root Canal Procedure

1. Getting Dental X-rays

First, our dentists will need to take digital X-rays of your teeth to determine how deep your cavity runs and whether the infection has spread to surrounding bone tissue. While your teeth may appear perfectly healthy on the surface, the inside of your tooth may tell a different story.

The X-rays will also reveal the shape of your root canals. This will help our dentists prepare for the procedure.

2. Prepping Your Tooth

Next, our dentists will give you a local anesthetic so you won’t feel any pain during the procedure. To keep the area around the infected tooth dry and clean, we may place a special rubber sheet around your tooth.

Root canal treatment has a historical reputation of being painful, but with today’s modern technology, most patients don’t feel hardly any pain at all. In fact, most people say the sensation is similar to getting a common tooth filling.

3. Removing the Infected Pulp

To remove the infected pulp, we will drill an access hole through the top of your tooth. Next, we’ll use small files of increasing size to remove the infected pulp. Every so often, we may flush out the inside of your tooth with water or sodium hypochlorite.

4. Restoring Your Tooth

Once the inside of your tooth is clean, our dentists will seal it. Depending on your circumstances, this can be done the same day or during a later visit to our office.

If we decide to seal your tooth at a later date, we will place a temporary filling to prevent saliva and food particles from getting inside of your tooth. When you come back, we’ll remove the temporary filling and fill the inside of your tooth with a permanent filling.

Teeth are often fragile after a root canal and filling. Our dentists may decide you need a dental crown to restore your tooth to its natural appearance and strength.

Save Your Smile With Root Canal Therapy

Our root canal dentists in Grand Rapids, MI, use the routine procedure to save patients’ smiles from serious infections. Call Contemporary Family Dental today at (616) 209-3969, or contact us online to schedule an appointment.

This blog post has been updated.