Safety of Root Canal Therapy: On Pulp Therapy and Health
“Dear doctor, I read on the Internet that root canal causes cancer. Is this true? ” Some people will have such doubts. Here’s the point: root canal treatment will not lead to cancer or any other diseases. The fact is, root canal therapy – performed at least tens of millions of times a year by skilled dental professionals around the world, can stop infection and protect teeth, saving future dental expenses.
Here, I recommends an article about the safety of root canal therapy by Dr. Marcus Johnson, a dental pulp expert in New York, USA. It can give the public a clear understanding of root canal therapy, take a close look at what root canal therapy is, why it is needed, and where these distrusted theories come from.
A smile reveals your pearly white crown. But each tooth also has one or more roots that extend down into the bone below the gum. In addition, there is a hollow space called “pulp cavity” in the center of each tooth, which contains living tissue (pulp). The nerves and blood vessels of the pulp pass through a narrow space called a canal, which branches out of the pulp cavity and passes through the tip of the root. Once outside the teeth, they connect to other parts of the body.
Now let’s go back to the pearly white tooth surface you can see. This is enamel, the hardest substance in your body. It protects the teeth from damage. But sometimes a small hole (cavity) or crack will be formed in the enamel, allowing bacteria to enter and start eroding the teeth. If left alone, these bacteria may reach the pulp, causing tooth damage, inflammation and pain.
If this inflammatory process remains untreated, the pulp tissue may die, leading to bacterial infection. Infection in the teeth can enter the surrounding tissues, bones and supporting structures through the root canal. This infection can cause jaw abscess pain and, in rare cases, can be life-threatening. In some cases, the pain may eventually subside or disappear. Eliminating infection is necessary to protect your oral health and even your overall health.
There are only a few effective treatments for infected teeth: you can open the teeth and get a “root canal” – what dentists call pulp; or you can perform apicectomy, a small surgery that involves removing the infection from the root. Only endodontic treatment or apicectomy can actually save teeth.
Saving infected teeth
Dental pulp treatment includes removing inflamed and diseased pulp tissue, disinfecting teeth, and sealing cavities and pipes so that bacteria cannot enter again. This needs to be done in a dental clinic, usually under local anesthesia. The teeth are then restored with a permanent filling material and reinforced with a crown, so that the root canal treated teeth can last decades of proper care.
Dentists who specialize in this treatment are called Endodontists. They go to a professional school two years or more after dental school to learn the most advanced technology, usually using micro instruments, microscopes and digital imaging.
Theory of distrust
The root of the false hypothesis that root treatment can lead to cancer is based on the wrong theory of dentists named Weston price in the early 20th century. He believes that leaving a “dead” organ in the body can lead to many seemingly unrelated diseases. However, getting rid of dead tissue is the goal of root canal therapy – the important benefit of keeping teeth!
In 1951, the highly respected journal of the American Dental Association, an evidence-based publication, revisited Dr price’s ideas. Not surprisingly, his conclusions do not meet the standards of modern scientific research and dental care. Since then, pulp surgery has become the first choice for the treatment of salvable infected teeth. Since then, advances in medical technology have made root canal therapy more predictable and successful than ever before.
As for the specific risk of cancer, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA otolaryngology head and neck surgery) found that the risk of cancer did not increase after root canal therapy in 2013. In fact, the study showed that dental patients with multiple dental pulp treatments had a 45% lower risk of cancer!
This is not to say, of course, that there is no risk in root canal therapy – all medical procedures do. For example, although the success rate of root canal therapy is very high, there is a risk that it will not work for the first time and the infection may recover. Pain and numbness caused by local anesthesia are also potential risks.
However, there are also risks of tooth extraction, including infection, pain, numbness and accidental damage to adjacent teeth. In addition, if you choose to do so, replacing the extracted teeth will increase the cost.
This is your choice
The choice of whether to receive root canal treatment is limited to you. It is important to discuss all the risks and benefits with your pulp doctor or general dentist so that you can understand your choice. And to make informed decisions, you have to have the latest evidence-based information – not the infamous outdated theories. If you want to know more, please do not hesitate to ask your pulp doctor or general dentist. You can also visit the website of the society of Endodontists for scientific and accurate information on root canal surgery.
The above is Marcus Johnson’s professional judgment. In addition, in clinical practice, bud also found that there is such a misunderstanding about root canal therapy among our people, “did you pull out my tooth nerve, or did it have an impact on the brain?” Because he thought that the nerve must be connected with the central system of the brain, which is a mistake.
What is the function of the nerve that we usually refer to in the outpatient treatment of Stomatology? It is stimulated by strong physical (such as cold and hot) and chemical (such as sour and sweet) senses. Under normal circumstances, this part of the nerve does not transmit obvious sensory signals to the brain. The tooth is an empty tube, in which there are nerves and blood vessels, as well as arteries and veins.
The function of nerve is mainly to nourish the cells in our teeth to make dentin cells. When the teeth are slightly worn, or even accumulated into severe wear naturally for a long time, they will be repaired by dentin hyperplasia, which is the protection mechanism of human teeth. In part, in order to maintain the thickness of the teeth, the hard tissues of the teeth will grow a little, but the speed is limited, and the speed is getting lower and lower with the growth of age. After the nerve is pulled out, the function is lost, leading to the loss of nutrition metabolism of the teeth, and the teeth will become discolored and brittle. In terms of feeling, it will not affect. Generally speaking, when the upper teeth touch the lower teeth, the sensory nerve is not the pulp nerve, but the periodontal nerve. “Pulp extraction” has no feeling for this kind of feeling.
