Root Canal Treatment in Surrey Hills

Let’s start off with what root canal treatment is not. A root canal treatment does not “kill the nerve”, a common misconception. When the nerve chamber of the tooth is infected, the tooth usually responds from a range of constant dull pain, to terrible pain which wakes you up at night. At this point the nerve is dying and it cannot be reversed. In the olden days, there would be no other option except to extract the tooth.

However nowadays with modern technology, we try to save your tooth by removing the dead and infected nerve. A root canal treatment is a procedure that involves removing the dying and infected nerve of the tooth, cleaning the remaining cavity of any pus or bacteria, and sealing the cavity with specialised materials to reduce future infection.

Infection of a tooth is usually related to bacteria entering the root canal. Typically this happens due to:

• Deep decay
• Cracked tooth or lost filling
• Previous deep fillings
• Trauma to the tooth
• Periodontal infection of the tooth

Root canal treatments are often done in multiple stages to complete the treatment, depending on the complexity of your tooth.

1. During your root canal appointment, you’ll be offered local anesthetic to numb the tooth to make the treatment more comfortable for you. The local anesthetic only numbs your tooth, and the surrounding tissues such as your lip, gums and cheek. It doesn’t affect your thinking or driving and it does not make you drowsy. Once your tooth is comfortable, we will remove decay,– any old or leaky fillings, the infected areas, pus and debris.
2. The next step of the RCT is cleaning inside of the canals to remove bacteria and infection and filling the root canals – to prevent bacteria from re-infecting the empty root canals, a permanent seal is placed inside the tooth.
3. Usually a tooth which requires a RCT would have had a large amount of tooth structure missing. It is important to reinforce the weak tooth with a crown. Refer to section on crowns.