Endodontics gets to the root of the problem! Root canals Hammersmith are often an effective method for saving teeth that would otherwise be lost, but it often has a bad reputation with many patients being very concerned about upcoming treatments.

Dental abscess

The dental abscess is a particularly stubborn presentation of abscesses; various infected tissues with a culture of bacteria that have been isolated from the rest of your body in a capsule of inflamed scar tissue can be tough to treat.

Historically, abscesses used to be lanced, but they are usually resolved with antibiotics in modern dental care. In most cases, the effectiveness of antibiotics is directly proportional to how well the area around the abscess is supplied with blood.

A dental abscess is formed between the microscopic gap where the root interfaces with the jawbone, which is an area with almost no blood flow; this is why intervention is required. Root canals Hammersmith are often performed with the combined use of antibiotics to help prevent secondary or systemic infections.

The procedure

At Kings Dental Clinic, we use the standard root canal procedure: drilling an access hole in the top of the affected tooth and exposing the underlying canal, which is then cleaned and widened until we get down to the underlying abscess. The abscess can then be drained and cleaned from within the tooth.

Depending on which tooth we are working on, the procedure can be quite extensive and take much longer, especially for molars with their two or more roots and difficult position in the mouth. Roots are also rarely straight, and an x-ray will be taken before the procedure to ascertain how complicated the root widening may be, with incomplete or impacted roots requiring significantly more time.

This often leads to the procedure being performed over multiple sessions, with a temporary filling used to close the access hole in between. During such sessions, an antiseptic solution is placed inside the tooth that will slowly seep into the dentin and help with the cleaning and abscess resolution.

As it takes the best part of 2 hours to complete, even a simple root canal procedure without a gap would be difficult for any patient and extremely taxing on our dentist, increasing chances of error.

Aftercare and recovery

The aftercare is minimal, and recovery is no more than a few days. In most cases, we are very proud of our clinic to have an extremely high success rate of 95% at permanently resolving abscesses. However, the most common complication is a re-formation of the abscess in the tooth.

The direction treatment will usually take in this situation is towards an apicoectomy, where the ends of the root tips are surgically removed. This is a relatively invasive procedure and usually only needs to be performed in very complicated systems that cannot be cleaned effectively or treated in any other way.

We’ve managed to achieve and maintain this high standard with our root canals Hammersmith, continually investing in further training and high-quality equipment like surgical microscopes, fine files and grinding tools.