Dentistry and Root Canal

Root Canal Complications - Pain After Root Canal

What are the complications of having root canal?

In only about 1% of the cases, there will be a ‘flare-up’ of the tooth with pain after root canal and sometimes swelling. This usually happens within the first three days following treatment and is caused by dying bacteria inside the tooth that put off toxins into your jaw. If this happens, you will need to be on an antibiotic. Call your dentist and let them advise you what to do.

Most of the time, however, there is little or no pain after root canal, if performed when first indicated. Many patients report immediate relief of their symptoms. If there was a lot of infection in the tooth before the root canal, there will be healing time required after the procedure and you may experience some pain. This pain can be moderate to severe and last several days, getting a little better each day.

If your tooth hurts when you chew on it, it is still healing and you need to chew on the other side of your mouth until the pain is gone.

Some teeth swell in the socket and feel ‘higher’ than the other teeth, disrupting the healing process. If this happens, call your dentist or Endodontist and get an appointment. They can adjust your bite to prevent this tooth from hitting so hard when you bite.

Occasionally, a endodontic file will break inside the tooth during the procedure. Most of the time, this is not a problem and the file is cemented into and becomes part of the tooth. There are reports of both complications and no problems at all with a broken file in a tooth.

Some people are surprised when they experience pain after root canal thinking the nerves are gone. The nerve inside your tooth is gone, but there are still nerves surrounding the outside of your tooth where in enters the gum. These nerves can be irritated by the procedure or by infection and can take time to heal.

You can have pain afterward if your tooth has a fracture. A fracture in your tooth can be diagnosed using a microscope, or dye tests. Teeth with a fracture should be crowned as soon after your root canal as possible. Avoid chewing on the fractured tooth until your dentist has crowned it.

Even after crowning, some teeth that have fracture will be sensitive on occasion, much like a healed broken bone is sometimes sensitive. This is normal and nothing to worry about unless the pain or sensitivity gets severe which could indicate the fracture has worsened and the tooth needs to be removed.

Sometimes, in spite of best efforts, the body does not heal the infection that was inside the tooth. It is a biologic procedure and is not guaranteed because everyone has differing immune systems and healing capacities. If your tooth does not heal, a re-treatment of the root canal can be performed, where the root canal is tried again.

If a pocket of infection is left in the bone that does not heal, an apicoectomy might be indicated.This is where a surgical procedure is performed and a small incision is made in the gum above the tooth and the infection is removed, the area sterilized and cleaned. This procedure is almost always performed by an Endodontist or Oral Surgeon and is rare, but the sucess rate is high.

A root canal removes the nerve inside your tooth. This nerve controls sensitivity to hot or cold. If you experience pain with hot or cold after your root canal, it is impossible for it to involve the root canal tooth. Unfortunately, it will be another tooth that may need root canal.
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Root Canal

Are Root Canals Safe?

There are people that insist that root canals are not a safe procedure and that no one should ever have one. These people follow a study done in the early 1900’s of Dr. Weston Price. This study concluded that infected material and bacteria are left in the tooth and continue to infect the body after the root canal is finished, therefore infection remains in the tooth and surrounding jaw bone.

The dental community has been accused of everything from total ignorance of this situation, to deliberately covering up these conclusions.

The American Association of Endodontists (AAE) claims that this information is based on old, imprecise root canal tecniques and lack of sterilization methods that are used today. Root canals are safe today because ultrasonic instruments combined with antibiotic pastes are used to clean out the microscopic ends of root tips and help avoid dental infection.

There are also new instruments like sonar locators to find the exact end of a root so that the entire length can be filled and sealed using biocompatible material that was not available decades ago.

There is no quarrel that leaving a decaying and dead tooth in your mouth because of fear of root canal is not wise. There is definite medical evidence that shows that dental infections can cause serious medical problems and can be life threatening.

Oddly enough, this was the original concern of Dr. Price. We now know that dental infections can cause heart attacks, strokes, and low birth weight babies. They cause diabetics to have higher and more abnormal blood glucose levels.
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Research studies performed in the 1930s and 1940s and those conducted in later years showed no relationship between having root canal teeth and the presence of illness. Instead, researchers found that people with root canal fillings were no more likely to be ill than people without them.

Over the past several years, however, a very small number of dentists and physicians have been claiming that teeth that have received root canal treatment contribute to illness and disease in the body. This claim is based on the outdated research performed by Dr. Weston Price from 1910-1930. His research stated that bacteria trapped in the teeth during root canal treatment can cause almost any type of disease, including arthritis, heart disease, kidney disease, and others.

There are bacteria in your teeth, even very healthy ones, and your mouth at all times. This has been an accepted fact for many years. But presence of bacteria does not constitute “infection” and is not necessarily a threat to a person’s health.

More recent attempts to copy the research of Dr. Price (and to check its accuracy) have been unsuccessful. Researchers now believe that the earlier findings may have been caused by poor sanitation and imprecise research techniques that were common in the early 1900s.

These more recent studies support the truth we report today—that teeth that receive proper endodontic treatment do not cause illness and that root canals are safe.

There are many misconceptions surrounding root canal treatment. As always, when considering any medical procedure, you should get as much information as you can about all of your options. Your dentist or endodontist can answer many of your questions, and if you still have concerns, it is often wise to seek a second opinion.

Root Canal