Root Canals
Teeth that can be saved for a patient's lifetime do a lot to preserve a person's health as well their youthful appearance. At Drs. Kowal and MacIlwaine, we have been pleased to offer root canal or "endodontic treatment" right in our office for our patients' convenience. We have been performing root canals for 23 years, and utilize the best of time-tested techniques as well as modern innovative approaches. Our Doctors have obtained training beyond the minimal training that most dentists had in dental school in root canals. Drs. Kowal and MacIlwaine completed training at East Carolina Medical School's General Practice Residency Program which was taught by specialists, and they have found that they have been able to keep their patients' comfort a top priority during the root canal process. Using their pain management training, the Drs. can very successfully manage your comfort levels, both during the procedure, as well as afterwards. At our office, we find that many patients are so comfortable during the root canal that they actually doze off right in the middle of it. Most of our patients find that they do not require any narcotic pain medication in the days following their root canal, but can carry on with their normal lives, including work and even travel, with ibuprofen or Advil at most being used.
The root canal procedure itself, from a technical point of view, can be visualized as a "special type of filling" that goes further into the heart of the tooth than a normal filling. When eating an apple, we usually take a bite through the skin of the fruit and into the softer tissue underneath. We do not want to bite too far into the core or seeds of the apple. In a tooth, most decay does not go past the enamel and inner tissue (dentin) and into the "core" or nerve space of the tooth. However, when the decay does go into that nerve space, the tooth will need to have that inner nerve space cleaned out and "filled in" with a soft biocompatible material, which is what doing a root canal is. A lot of people really dread the idea of having a root canal, but when managed properly, they are usually less painful, less expensive, and much faster than the alternative to a root canal, which would be surgically extracting the tooth, and then replacing the tooth with a denture or an implant. Catching a decay problem before it gets to the root canal stage is usually accomplished by getting timely checkups, and is the preferred way to go. On the other hand, once a tooth has reached the root canal stage, Drs. Kowal and MacIlwaine can help you through that, often with little or no pain or disruption to your busy lifestyle.