Endodontics is the dental medicine specializing in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of dental pulp diseases by removing the tissues inside the affected tooth, cleaning and sterilizing the root canals, definitively filling them.

Years ago, the teeth that had the affected dental pulp were extracted. Today, endodontic treatment provides the dentist with the necessary and effective means to save the tooth.

Symptoms

Symptoms specific to tooth decay with a carious process are as follows: significant, spontaneous and constant pain, nocturnal pain, increased cold or hot food pain, squeezed pain, seemingly no apparent tooth coloration of the tooth, mobility, the appearance of a abscess or a fistula against the tooth.

Do you have any of the following symptoms?

• hot or cold sensitivity that persists long after removing the painful stimulus;
• pain in chewing or biting;
• dull pain;
• spontaneous pain;
• pulsatile pain;
• pain that awakens you from your night sleep;
• persistent pain on a tooth that has a fill or a crown;
• pain in a tooth that has been treated endodontically;
• pain in a tooth that has suffered a trauma;
• chronic pain that radiates to the nose, eyes, throat, ear;
• tooth with abnormal mobility;
• swelling near a tooth, from which, when pressed, blood or pus emerges;
• tooth that has changed its color.

Cauze

The pulp, the living tissue, located inside the tooth, is protected by the harmful factors in the external environment by the hard tissues of the tooth that surround it on the outside (enamel, dentin, cement). Following various aggressions (most commonly caries, traumas, repeated dental treatments, etc.), they are destroyed. In the space inside the tooth penetrate saliva bacteria. Due to their invasion, the tooth pulp is irreversibly flammable or necrosis (dies). Inside the tooth, after the death of the pulp, the body can no longer fight the infection. The bacteria live and multiply at this level, using debris dead as food. Along the channels in the roots can migrate further. Untreated, the infection cantonate initially within the tooth expands in time to the maxillary bone and soft tissues around the tooth. These pathological processes cause persistent pain due to inflamed pulp or irritation of living tissues around the root, bone destruction, and inflammation and deformation of soft tissues in the vicinity of the tooth.

Endodontic treatment and information

Endodontic treatment is a succession of therapeutic procedures aimed at eliminating infection from the dental pulp and protecting areas decontaminated by other microbial aggressions.

Endodontic treatment is one of the most common dental procedures. If the pulp of a tooth is infected or inflamed or the infection has reached the apical periodontium, endodontic treatment is necessary to save the tooth.

The main purpose of endodontic treatment is to eliminate pain and prevent complications. There are also situations in which endodontic treatment applies to teeth that are free, undamaged but are to be ground and covered by prosthetic works (for example, metal-ceramic crown). This eliminates the risk of subsequent pulp complications, which, in order to be treated, would require the removal of prosthetic work previously performed.

A proper endodontic treatment takes place over several stages:

• removing dental pulp from both the pulp chamber and the root canals;
• cleansing, disinfection and preparation of the pulp chamber and root canals with specific endodontic needles and irrigation solutions;
• specific medication may be placed on the root canals for several weeks. This is an optional step and is all the more important as the pulp infection is more severe;
• the last step of any endodontic treatment is channel obturation. This procedure involves sealing the root canals with specific obturation materials.