Getting to the Root of It

Stuff happens to your teeth. You may have been playing a little pond hockey with Henrik Zetterberg and a puck came up and bonked you in the mouth. You may have been playing a Turkey Bowl over on the Central Michigan fields and butted heads with another player by accident. You may have had braces when you were in high school. All of those scenarios can cause trauma to a tooth. The tooth wasn’t knocked out, but it was rocked. Or in the case of braces, moving the tooth may have caused root damage. You may not even know it when the trauma begins, but it can eventually threaten the life of the tooth.

And there are the more obvious issues, things such decay that has invaded the interior of a tooth. Or a previous filling that has again started to decay around it.

These are all cases where the tooth may be in danger of needing to be extracted, as damage has entered the interior pulp of the tooth. And because only little kids with wiggly baby teeth like to have a tooth pulled (hello, Tooth Fairy!), most of us will do what’s necessary to save the tooth.

That something would be a root canal with Dr. Egger.

What is a root canal?

While unfairly associated with medieval torture, root canals are a tooth-saving life raft. Every tooth has one or more roots that anchor the tooth into the jawbone. Nerves and blood vessels run through several tiny channels or “canals” in the root into the pulp at the center of the tooth. When a cavity or fracture allows bacteria to get into the interior of the tooth the pulp is likely going to become infected. Now things get bad. The bacteria will spread through the interior and down into the root canals. From there it can also begin to infect the surrounding gum tissue. Plus, it will inflame the nerve and surrounding tissue in the roots causing extreme pain.

That pain if where people confuse the pain of the infection with the pain (non-existent) of a root canal.

Dr. Egger uses a root canal to:

• Get rid of the pain
• Reduce swelling
• Stem the infection
• Remove the decayed stuff in the interior of the tooth
• Keep the remaining healthy tooth structure intact
• Restore function and appearance of the tooth

How it’s done

Dr. Egger drills a small hole in the top of the tooth. Then he inserts a series of small round files into the interior of the tooth to scrape out and remove the dead pulp, bacteria, nerves, and other tissue. The tooth interior is now empty and is then thoroughly disinfected to make sure the infection is gone. The tooth is now filled with a rubber-like substance known as gutta-percha. It is then sealed with a filling and usually topped with a crown to return strength to the tooth. Unlike the rumors you may have heard, root canals are painless. They are done after the tooth and gums are local anesthetized. The damaged tooth can then usually live a long life despite not having anything inside it (except gutta-percha). That’s OK — we only need the living tissue in the tooth when the tooth is developing when we are kids.

Do you have a tooth with extreme pain? Call Dr. Egger at (989) 773-3560 to make an appointment.