Root canals have a success rate of 95%.
Dr. Parikh will need to examine your tooth and take x-rays to determine if you’re a good candidate for a root canal. If the decay has reached the deepest layers of dental pulp, an extraction may be necessary.
All of the dental pulp, including the tooth’s roots, is scraped out. This will relieve your pain.
Each tooth contains 1 to 4 canals. Each of the canals needs to be cleaned and reshaped.
A gutta-percha filling is used to fill the inside of the tooth where the pulp used to be. If the tooth is a molar, we will recommend that you have a dental crown placed to protect the vulnerable tooth.
A root canal performed in a front tooth involves fewer canals. At the very front, these teeth only contain one canal. This means less time spent cleaning canals and potentially fewer appointments. Because these teeth are thinner, we also need to access the pulp chamber by drilling into the back of the tooth. Dental crowns are not always necessary.
When a root canal is performed in a tooth located at the rear of the mouth, we access the pulp chamber by drilling into the chewing surface of the tooth. These teeth can contain up to 4 canals in a single tooth, which may mean multiple appointments to complete the cleaning and reshaping process. A dental crown will need to be placed at a separate appointment to protect the weakened tooth to protect it from chewing forces.
If a root canal fails, you can get root canal retreatment which has just as high of a success rate as the first root canal.