Talking Teeth

Root canal filling
(Root canal filling or root filling or nerve filling or RCT)

This is a very known treatment option among dental patients. We ll have an insight into this.
A root canal filling is done to a dying or dead tooth, and by doing a root canal filling we make the tooth inert inside the oral cavity. That means, the tooth will be functional physically, will give aesthetic replacement but dead or won’t generate any sense.

When do you need a RCT
1. Severe pain from the tooth
2. Discloured tooth
3. A carious tooth which causes abscesses (heat bubbles)

How a RCT is done?
Dentists remove all the infected nerves and blood vessels inside the pulp chamber and pulp canals of the tooth and fill those spaces with an inert material. Pulp chamber is a pace inside the crown of the tooth and canals are tiny canals that run through the roots.

Is the tooth strong after a RCT?
The tooth become painless and inert after the root filling, but most of the time the tooth would have been cracked more prior to RCT or dentist would have made a large hole to find full the pulp canals (which are tiny openings of roots, to find them dentists drill and make holes in the crowns of the tooth); and at the end of RCT, in the remaining tooth, the original tooth substance is less and the artificial filling is more. Hence the tooth is technically weak. It’s a best practise to have an artificial crown also placed following an RCT; this being a routing procedure abroad and a rare procedure in our country due to cost constraints.

Tooth structure

It's time for us to get an insightof the tooth structure. Grossly a tooth has two main parts; the crown and the root. The white part seen outside in the oral cavity is the crown and the root is buried inside the bone and the gums. There are several layers of tissues that make the crown, namely the outer harder layer is enamel, inside that a lively layer of tissues; dentine. There is a cavity called pulp cavity of the tooth which is seen continuously throughout the crown and the root of the tooth in which the nerves and the blood vessels of the tooth remains. Thus, the pulp cavity is indirectly called as the nerve of the tooth. And again the roots too has several layers and in the middle this pulp cavity extends. Nerves and blood vessels enter through a minute opening at the apex of the roots. Basically, during root canal treatment (aka nerve filling or root filling), the dentist remove all the nerves and blood vessels from the pulp cavity and fill the pulp cavity with an inert material.

Dental pain; pain on teeth.

Pain arising from the Jaws could be due to so many reasons; problems of the teeth-dental causes, or from bone, muscle or nerve around or may be idiopathic.
The commonest pain of Jaws is the dental pain- pain arising from teeth. Pain arising from the teeth is basically of two types; pain and sensitivity. To understand the basis of the pain and the sensitivity we must know a little bit about the structure of teeth.
Teeth have an outer covering which is basically hard and a dead layer - enamel; which does not show any sensation. The tissue layer that is inside enamel, which is called dentine, is a lively tissue. When the outer enamel is worn due to any reason; Physical attrition, abrasion or acidic erosion, the inner dentinal layer is exposed and that evokes sensitivity. This could either be treated by placing a filling over the exposed dentine ( in case of a cavity, a filling of the cavity) or in case of a minute dentinal exposure, a desensitising tooth paste might help.

In the instance of pain, which could again be short lasting, less sever and stops when we remove the stimulus, can be treated by a normal filling. A severe pain, which doesn't stop when you remove the stimulus or you can get a severe pain over night or along a longer time period means the infection of the teeth has gone deep to the nerves (pulp) of the teeth. This stage can be treated either by removing that tooth or by doing a nerve filling, root filling or root canal treatment.

Clarification: Pain arises when you take water to mouth; stops when you spit the water out means, you can treat the tooth with a normal filling. Pain doesn't stop even after you spit water out means, you need a root filling aka RCT.

The above is an insight of the dental pain.
Following are some more common causes of pain, which I will write on, in times to come.
Gum diseases
Impacted tooth
Inflammation of dental pulp
Cracked teeth
Tooth decay