The team at Rugby Dental Arts, Charlottesville, Virginia, always aims to preserve your natural teeth and help you smile with poise. However, injuries and decay can sometimes circumvent your dental care, necessitating restorative dental treatments like root canals.
When our team recommends root canal treatment, the objective is to relieve pain and save your tooth from extraction to ensure you keep your beloved tooth.
The basics of a root canal
Traditionally, dentists’ go-to remedy for troublesome teeth was removal. But since removing your tooth leaves a gap that could haunt you down the line, a root canal is preferable to dental extraction.
Root canal treatment involves removing the diseased pulp chamber and restoring your tooth with a filling or crown. Your treated tooth looks and functions like natural teeth and can remain healthy for life!
What happens during treatment?
Trauma, gum disease, or deep decay can cause infection to penetrate your tooth pulp. When your pulp is inflamed or infected, you experience tooth pain, sometimes with a swollen face. Sometimes, your tooth may darken, and your gums can develop persistent pimples. Ignoring your infected tooth won’t make it go away. In fact, things worsen. If left untreated, a tooth infection can cause the affected tooth to die and spread the infection to the surrounding tissues.
Although you’ve heard harrowing stories about root canals, modern technologies have made this treatment more comfortable than ever.
Here are the intricate steps of a safe, painless, and effective root canal.
- Oral examination: We use dental X-rays to inspect your tooth and the surrounding tissues to determine your eligibility for a root canal
- Local anesthesia: We use local anesthetics to numb your tooth to ensure you remain comfortable throughout your treatment. Next, we place a rubber dam around the treated tooth to keep it saliva-free
- Preparing your tooth: Next, we make a small hole at the top of your tooth to access your pulp chamber. Then, we remove your infected pulp, clean, and file your root canals. We then fill your empty canals with gutta-percha to seal out future bacterial infections
- Tooth restoration: Finally, we place a temporary filling to close the access hole. Some patients only require a filling, but if the tooth is severely weakened, you may need to restore it with a crown
Following root canal treatment, you may experience mild pain, bruising, and swelling. These symptoms shouldn’t scare you — they are expected, especially after the anesthesia wears off. Our team will give you post-care instructions to ensure an event-free recovery. Most patients resume their normal activities within a few days after the procedure.
Gentle root canal services near me
Suspect you need a root canal in Charlottesville, Virginia?
Don’t delay treatment. Instead, please call (434) 296-8034 to schedule an endodontic consultation with Rugby Dental Arts. The earlier we treat your tooth, the higher the chances of saving it from extraction.
