WHY DO I HAVE TO KILL MY NERVE?
- On March 30, 2017
We often find ourselves in this situation: when a tooth starts hurting spontaneously or due to stimulations such as cold or hot drinks, or the simply biting pressure, we tend to run to the mirror but can’t see anything relevant. Then, we have no other option than visiting a dentist who, after a series of exams, indicates: “we must kill the nerve”. At that moment, a bunch of questions start running through our head: “why do I have to “kill the nerve”?”, “Is it going to hurt?”, “what would happen to my tooth now?”, “how many times am I going to have to come?”, “would it not be better to remove the tooth?”
Now, why do I have to kill the nerve? In the vast majority of cases, what happens is that the nerve that is located inside the tooth – in the pulp chamber – is irritated by an external agent. This can be caries, a fracture caused by trauma or a crack originated from many different causes. When this irritations are generated, bacteria or toxins produced by the same, can get into the nerve, resulting in a degeneration of the nerve. This situation is generally obvious due to spontaneous pain of varying degrees, pain due to temperature changes or to the chewing pressure.
But in reality, what does it mean “killing the nerve”?
Killing the nerve is how we commonly referred to a dental treatment actually called root canal treatment, this is nothing more than the removal of the damaged nerve inside the tooth, the cleaning and disinfection of the ducts that contains them and the sealing of them with an inert and biocompatible material. This allows that all the infection and inflammation, both around and inside the tooth, disappear, thus healing the problem and maintaining the tooth actively working in the mouth.
Is it going to hurt me?
It doesn’t have to, in most cases anaesthesia allows the patient to have a complete removal of any annoyance. Nowadays, there is a whole arsenal in the dentistry industry for controlling the pain absolutely.
How many times do I have to come to the dentist to kill the nerve
L. G. Dental has the technology and knowledge to solve almost all cases in a single session. Nowadays, a root canal treatments is a routine procedure that should not cause any anxiety in patients.
But, isn’t it better to remove the tooth?
This is one of the questions that I deal the most with patients. Actually, an extraction should be the last option when resolving a dental problem. Unfortunately, to execute this, it takes a series of events that predisposes the patient to suffer from another amount of problems that could be simply avoided by keeping the tooth in your mouth. Among them are: the tooth mobility, the spaces or triangles and the so feared bone resorption, in many cases complicating even the placement of a prosthesis or implant.
