Root canal options?!
Question: my friend is suppose to have one,but she hears they are not worth getting.this other friend of ours says she had 2 and its falling apart..waste of 1400 dollars. so besides pulling it,what else can she have done? maybe filled??
Answers: my friend is suppose to have one,but she hears they are not worth getting.this other friend of ours says she had 2 and its falling apart..waste of 1400 dollars. so besides pulling it,what else can she have done? maybe filled??
You have a bacterial infection in your tooth. These can be dangerous. The options are root canal or extraction. There are no other safe options. Extraction solves the problem but you are then missing a tooth. A root canal consists of two steps. 1. control the infection. This is when the dentist irrigates the canal with sodium hypochlorite (bleach) to kill the bacteria and remove debree`. Antibiotics are often prescribed to destroy bacteria that may be in the system. 2. Sealing the canal so there is no further infection. This is usually done with gutta percha in the US.
Now the root canal is finished but not the restorative aspect. Depending on the condition of the tooth, it may require a build up and a crown. Most root canal teeth that are lost, are lost because the patient did not finish the restorative aspects.
I have patients who are still chewing away on 20 year old root canals. If you do the root canal, plan on doing it all.
DDS 32 years
No, a root canal is needed because decay (bacteria) has entered the nerve of the tooth. A filling won't help that.... only create more pain. The decay must be removed from the nerve or she will develop an infection that would be very painful. A root canal takes out the affected nerve in a tooth. This make the tooth dead and it may become brittle, easily breaks or falls apart. A crown is done to protect the existing tooth from breaking down any more. Expensive though yes. Other option is to extract it. Feel better!
Success rate for root canals is over 90%, and when they fail, it's usually because the patient didn't come back to put the final restoration on the tooth, either the filling or the crown. I see that very often, the patient is in pain, we finish a very nice root canal, and place a temporary filling, then we ask the patient to come back next week to finish the final restoration, since the patient is not in pain anymore, they never come back. Over time, the temporary filling dissolves, the tooth starts leaking, and gets infected again, and it might break as well since it's not supported with the proper final restoration. Unfortunately, this situation is so hard to fix, broken tooth with infected root canal is hard to treat, and the treatment outcome can be bad, most dentists hate to deal with such scenario. So if your friend is planning on having a root canal done, make sure she finishes the whole required treatment, not only the root canal, a root canal is only a small part of the needed treatment for that tooth. She also needs to know if she can afford the whole procedure, as crowns can be very expensive. Some dentists make payment plans, I would suggest doing that if money is an issue. Extracting a tooth is always the last thing you want to do, teeth are very precious, and you will not appreciate them utill you lose them.
Unfortunately if root canal is needed, it can be the only procedure that would solve the problem, your options would be in what type of restoration rather than if I can have a root canal or something else.
Good luck for your friend
a tooth can be be preserved by filling and rooth canal. no matter what the costs, it is always worthwhile to save a natural tooth. it pays in the long run.