Endodontic Treatments

What is endodontic therapy (nerve therapy)?

Endodontic therapy is a major in dentistry that interests in treating the infectious, exposed, or dead pulp (nerve) of the tooth. This major also includes preservation of the healthy/ living nerve.

The dental pulp is a tissue inside the tooth that extends from the top of the root to the middle of the tooth crown. This tissue consists of a group of very small blood capillaries in addition to the nerve. Some of the tooth pulp’s functions are sensitivity to the thermal changes (cold\hot) and forming the root in the period of tooth growth.

In case of teeth caries or crown fraction cause of accidents, or when a crack is formed in the dentin, the dental pulp is exposed to a bacterial invasion that presents naturally in the saliva. This invasion causes infection in the pulp that causes pain especially cause of the thermal variables (cold\hot).

If the pulp is left untreated, the infection progresses to abscesses and causes pain when biting or pressing on the tooth. Gums swelling also may results (in the part of the gums accompanied by the infected tooth) or in the face side in case of severe abscesses. In many cases the patient feels no symptoms or pain caused by the infected tooth. These silent cases are diagnosed “accidentally” through the periodic examination of the teeth when reading the dental rays, as these infections and abscesses cause a dissolution of the bone around the roots of the tooth.

The importance of the endodontic treatment (nerve traction)

1. Suitable restoration to the teeth shape
2. Suitable function for the teeth
3. The aesthetics of the teeth while maintaining the integrity of their physiology.

Thus, we find that endodontic therapy is inevitable in many procedures and it can sometimes be the best, the safest, and the most perfect solution if the alternative choice was to extract the tooth although performing it may be tiring, hard and long for both of the dentist and the patient.

Indicators for this treatment are:

1. All kinds of pulp infection which don’t undergo biological and preservative therapy
2. Acute and chronic gingivitis
3. The need to the therapy after a previous endodontic therapy
4.  Preparing teeth for the prosthetic
5. Preparation for prosthetics with crowns that require a big grinding from the teeth hard tissues (including the huge inclination or teeth extension from the jaw)
6. Endodontic therapy also appears in preparing teeth for intraneural whitening.
7. Treating teeth fractions causes trauma to the pulp or its death.

The therapy consists of several steps:

First of all, the dentist takes the x-ray photo to detect the injury’s depth and usually uses topical anesthesia. The patient feels slight numbness in the injection area during the whole treatment period.

An elastic seal is placed to maintain teeth clean and dry.

The dentist opens the endodontic chamber to the root canal using specific tools.

The infected pulp is removed with nerves from the tooth cavity. And the cavity is flushed with water or with sodium solution to remove residues.

The dentist may choose to do an additional step to place anti-bacterial drugs in the tooth cavity for few days.

In the next appointment or in the same day the dentist fills the tooth cavity with a substance called Gutta-Percha.

If the root canal is filled well, then the dentist places the final filling for the tooth to shut the tooth permanently and restore the chewing and occlusal functions.

The patient then feels the pain fades away gradually over time.

The therapy of cheek swelling after the nerve traction

The swelling can be reduced by placing cold (iced) cans on the external surface of the face in the treated area.

Rinsing with warm water and salt helps speed up recovery, with preservation of oral and dental hygiene.