Root Canal?

Are they as nesasary as dentists lead you to believe. (Very expensive) Why don't they do fillings ant more?

Root Canal?
Yes...they are necessary if you want to save a tooth! They are usually performed when the decay is at a point where it has reached the nerve ending and the nerve in the tooth is about to "die". So, a dentist will go in and actually extract the nerve and then proceed to pack the tooth with protective material in the interior of the tooth in order to make it stable. After this has taken place, a crown will be placed over the tooth in order to make it even more stable(if a crown is not placed on the tooth after the root canal, the tooth can, and will eventually, break off due to the lack of blood supply inside the tooth from the absent nerve).





So, think of a root canal as a two step process! It requires a root canal and a crown...both are very expensive, but in the long-run, are tooth-savers! If you have the available insurance and/or money, I would always advise to save the tooth. There are many problems that you run into when you extract a tooth(movement of all of the other teeth, no chewing surface etc). Hope that this helps!
Reply:I believe that a root canal is used when the tooth is too far decayed to make a filling an option. When I had my root canal my dentist explained that if he were to remove all the decay there would not be enough of the tooth left to fill. Plus the infection was getting close to the root. Hope this helps
Reply:A root canal is more complex than just a filling. The root of the tooth is damaged and to preserve the base of the tooth, the root is drilled out and then covered w/ a crown. This prevents having to have a tooth pulled out. Yes, its expensive but its less expensive than false teeth or implants. A filling, on the other hand, just fills in a small area of the tooth that has the cavity above the roots. But you could still end up w/ another cavity below the filling later on. Ive had that happen a few times. But, Im a chicken when it comes to dentists to so I just opt to get the tooth pulled if its not in a noticable area.
Reply:There is a lot of work to a root canal. The dentist thinks that they are necessary when the fillings of a tooth are too near the nerve or root. I believe that they have saved a lot of teeth.
Reply:Toooooooooo Painful then your tooth breaks