After learning that you need a root canal, various reasons for delaying the treatment may cross your mind. You may feel afraid that the procedure will be painful or be concerned about the cost. However, you shouldn’t let unfounded fears prevent you from getting a necessary root canal, as doing so could lead to a permanent change in your smile.
Why You Need a Root Canal
A root canal serves to save a tooth at risk of loss. Generally, your only other option than getting a root canal is an extraction. If you want to avoid the cost, recovery, and pain of an extraction with the loss of part of your smile, you should not put off your root canal.
The biggest reason endodontists do root canals is to stop an infection inside the tooth from taking hold and spreading. You could pick up this infection from deep decay that opens a hole to the pulp of your tooth or from a cracked or broken tooth.
Often, the first indication that you have something wrong is a growing pain and sensitivity in the tooth. You may feel lingering pain after eating hot or cold foods. Or, your tooth might hurt when you bite down with it. In other instances, an accident that causes a crack in a tooth prompts the need for a root canal.
Whether a visible crack, pain or extra sensitivity, you need to see an expert in treating tooth pain to find out if you have damage to your tooth pulp that a root canal can correct.
Wrong Reasons for Delaying Root Canal Therapy
There are always reasons for putting off any type of dental therapy, but over time, people have developed some terrible excuses for not getting recommended root canals. The following are some of the worst reasons to not get a root canal. Don’t fall for the faulty logic of these excuses.
I Don’t Really Need a Root Canal; The Doctor Just Wants to Make Money
At the end of the day, the goal of all dentists and endodontists is to preserve their patients’ smiles. Endodontists take this one step further by doing everything they can to help their patients avoid losing their teeth. Through surgical and non-surgical endodontic treatments, they can prevent tooth loss caused by internal pulp damage.
If your endodontist or dentist recommends a root canal, it is because they believe it is the only way for you to keep the tooth.
I Can Just Have the Tooth Pulled
Yes, you can have the tooth pulled, and extraction alone may initially cost less than a root canal, but over time, it may not be a better choice.
When you have a tooth pulled, it creates a gap between your remaining teeth. Those teeth will eventually shift in your mouth to try to close that gap by respacing themselves. You may discover that your once straight teeth now have uneven spacing.
Another unappreciated problem caused by having a tooth pulled is the effect it has on the bone under the gums.
Your teeth and the bone that supports them exist to benefit each other. The bone keeps your teeth secure in your mouth, and the teeth ensure the bone maintains its density. When you lose a tooth, the portion of the bone that once held it up will erode. The more teeth you have lost, the worse the bone erosion becomes. In people who have lost all their teeth, their jaw can change shape enough to impact how their dentures fit.
Getting a tooth pulled will lead to unexpected problems with your smile in the future. Getting a root canal will prevent these by allowing you to keep the tooth.
A Root Canal Is Dangerous
The idea that a root canal is dangerous is only one of many myths surrounding this procedure. Today’s procedures are safe, effective, and painless. There is no correlation between root canals and cancer or other illnesses.
Getting a root canal is one way to care for your overall health by protecting the integrity of your teeth.
What Happens If You Don’t Get a Root Canal
If you don’t get a root canal, you put yourself at a higher risk of several negative impacts, including extending the pain that you feel in the tooth. Getting your root canal as soon as you can will shorten how long you feel in pain and prevent the following risks of delay.
Infection Spread
Infection anywhere in your body has the potential to spread from its original location. The same holds true for an infection inside a tooth. It could spread to produce an even more painful abscess at the root end of the tooth, which might require surgery to fix. In some cases, the infection could even spread through the bloodstream to other parts of the body.
Root canal therapy removes the infection from inside the tooth and seals the tooth’s interior to stop decay and prevent future damage.
Tooth Loss
The infection inside a tooth that can spread elsewhere can also cause wear of the bone under the roots. Left unchecked, this bone loss can progress to the stage where your dentist must pull it. Root canal therapy won’t save a tooth that doesn’t have enough bone structure around it to support it.
Schedule your root canal therapy before the damage to the tooth becomes too severe to save.
Why Risk Your Tooth? Schedule Your Appointment for a Root Canal with Southern Endodontic Specialists
Your tooth won’t fix itself. The reason that your dentist or endodontist recommended a root canal will remain until you undergo the treatment or have the tooth extracted.
When you visit our high-tech offices at Southern Endodontic Specialists, you’ll have experts providing you with painless root canal therapy.
Let us help you cross off this chore from your to-do list and let you keep your tooth. Contact us today to schedule your root canal therapy appointment at your nearest Southern Endodontic Specialists location in Houma or Thibodaux.