Find Out Why Our Root Canals Are So Comfortable
Dr. B: Root canals have a bad reputation, and they go back years and years and years ago to a lot of the comedy shows that you see on TV where someone would go to the dentist, have a root canal, walk out with the ice packs wrapped around their face. They’d look swollen beyond belief. Well, it’s not the root canal that created that problem. It was the infection that formed in the nerve of the tooth, which is a living part of the tooth. Anybody who has a restorable tooth, anything that’s not destroyed beyond repair, could probably benefit from a root canal. Root canals do not create pain, they take pain away. Probably 45 to 60 percent of the patients that we do root canals on maybe take pain medicine for one dose and then not again. It’s just not the way it used to be or the way it’s portrayed on TV. A lot of people that hear the word “root canal” expect a very painful procedure while it’s being done, and that’s just not the case anymore. The whole key to doing this is to get in great anesthesia, and I will never start a root canal unless I know you’re comfortable. Every step along the way with every procedure we do, especially the ones that could potentially cause people pain, I’ll stop and ask how you’re doing: “Are you feeling this?” And there’s more than one way to get somebody numb. So, that’s what we do.