Patients | Root Canal Filling
Up to 50% of the adult population is estimated to have an undetected root infection. Patients often have no symptoms, but the root infection can flare up and become extremely painful, requiring prompt treatment.
What can you do to keep your mouth healthy?
A thorough daily dental hygiene and a dental check-up are of course important, and necessary to prevent and detect any oral disease. You can yourself improve the bacterial composition through dietary changes and by taking lactic acid bacteria, such as ProlacSan® for the oral cavity. Lactic acid bacteria strengthen your oral cavity by affecting your biofilm and achieving a healthy bacterial balance.
Root canal inflammation is an inflammation at the root of a tooth where the nerve has died. Root canal inflammation occurs if bacteria penetrate the dead nerve, typically due to a deep caries attack that has penetrated the tooth nerve, but the condition can also occur after a blow to the tooth or a crack in the tooth. It can also occur even after the tooth has been treated for root canal disease or a crown has been fitted.
The first sign of a root infection is that the tooth is sore when you chew or tap on it lightly. However, most people go for a long time without symptoms. Root infection is diagnosed with an X-ray taken at the dentist.
A root infection (pulpitis) can only be treated by either pulling the tooth out, opening it up, removing the infected root, or cleaning it out. To do this, the dentist will make a conical cavity with a smooth surface by using several rotating root files of increasing diameter and conicity. Next, the dentist will clean the pulp chamber as effectively as possible of bacteria, after which the dentist will fill it with a dense sealing material typically made of gutta-percha (natural gum from gutta-percha trees).
There must be no air pockets in the root filling, as this can lead to reinfection. This may sound easy, but, in many cases, it is a difficult procedure. First of all, because the dimensions are very small, and then not least because many root canals can be very curved. Cleaning and filling a very thin and very curved canal without being able to see what you are doing is difficult. This is why only about 50% of root fillings are successful after 5 years.
There are two main reasons for this: firstly, it is very difficult to remove all bacteria because they hide inside the wall of the root canal itself. Secondly, it is difficult to fill a thin curved canal without leaving a small air pocket.
The key is therefore to kill the bacteria in the root canal, clean it out well and make a tight root filling.
The only alternative to a root canal is to pull out the tooth.
Around 100 million root canals are performed worldwide each year. 50% of these fail within 5 years. The main reason for root canal failure is that the root canal is not cleaned well enough and the pathogenic bacteria are not killed and/or the root canal filling is not made tight enough.
Archaeological findings have shown that root canal treatment of teeth has been carried out as far back as Roman times. At that time, there were not many possibilities to make a proper root filling, so root cleaning was done. No suitable material had been found with which to fill the root canal. It was not until 1847 that a natural rubber material such as gutta-percha was found to be suitable for this purpose, as it had the properties needed to provide a dense root filling.
Gutta-percha is still used today and is still considered to be the most suitable and well-tested material for making a dense root filling.
Elmevej 8, Glyngøre
7870 Roslev
Danmark
Phone: +45 32 57 30 00
Email:info@cmsdental.dk
