What is root canal treatment?
Root canal treatment is the tooth-preserving therapy for a tooth whose nerve is inflamed or even dead. The aim of this endodontic treatment is to preserve the tooth.
There are several causes for the inflammation of the tooth nerve. Mostly it is a carious defect where bacteria have penetrated the tooth nerve, but also trauma (blow, etc...), crown grinding or loss of tooth hard substance up to the tooth nerve.
Course of treatment
At our clinic, root canal treatments are always performed with Dental dam (Kofferdam). This involves isolating the tooth from the oral cavity with a tension rubber, thus ensuring a dry and sterile environment. It is the only way to prevent contamination (pollution by bacteria) of the root canal system via breath and saliva.
A local anaesthetic ensures that the treatment is completely painless.
The root canals are machinely prepared, disinfected and the germ-free canal is filled.
We use the "single walk method", i.e. root canal treatment and restoration with a crown in one session. You go home on the same day with the finished crown.
The most optimal treatment is a filling of the root canal up to the root tip and a tight closure and protection of the root with a crown, thus preventing reinfection (re-entry of pathogens) and tooth breakage.
Under these circumstances, root-treated teeth have an excellent long-term prognosis.
