Should You Save Or Remove A Badly Infected Tooth

[Transcription]

Hello, I’m Dr. Grey Kantor here with Kantor Dental Group in San Rafael California. Today, I want to talk about root canal. Whether to use a root canal to save a tooth or decide to lose a tooth and do an implant.

If you’re thinking about this decision, your heads in the right place. This is the exact line of thought you should be thinking whether or not to save the tooth. Something you need to take the advice of your provider. They could assess the amount of damage has been done to the tooth. Best to go over with you, whether it’s worth doing the root canal or if it’s better and more long term to just go to an implant.

I’ll Give you some examples. Behind me, this patient has a tooth right here. If I make it a little bit bigger. If you look right here, there’s a dark area here that starts to get it close to the root canal. That is the minimum size of something we might do a root canal on. Something I would definitely do a root canal on. I would not consider doing an implant there. That is a great looking tooth. I love everything about that tooth except for the really large cavity. So, a prime candidate for a root canal.

Now On the other hand, on the same patient. They had two fillings, two big, big fillings down here. One down here, one up here and you can see this filling, it kind of spreads out quite a bit right here. It’s… in the dark area around this filling, the filling is the white part, the dark area is the root canal. The filling in this, this one is so big, that when we prepare for a crown it may not be strong enough to handle a load of chewing. Especially on a tooth like that. That would be a tooth, or maybe the one above it up here with this other very large filling that needs a root canal. It may be a tooth where the longevity might not be worth it to do the root canal. You’ll get better longevity from a tooth, from an implant tooth.

So, that’s basically the line of thought that I like to do. Considering a root canal, build up, post, crown can get close to the cost of an implant. In conclusion, it’s just best to go with what your dentist sees. This is something only really gained by experience, seeing it all the time. Knowing which they think will last longer. I would just talk to your dentist about it and see what they have to say. If you want to come into our office, were welcome to go out with you. We’re located in San Rafael California.

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