One-time endodontic treatment

1. What is endodontic treatment?

Each tooth on the jaw has a system of blood vessels and nerves that nourish and conduct outside sensory stimulus. This vascular and nervous system is called the pulp, which has a complex structure and varies with each tooth, individual and age… For example, the maxillary central incisors usually have 1 canal, but the maxillary molars usually have 3 or 4 canals; or the old’s teeth have pulp calcification that brings difficulty for endodontics…

The pulp can be damaged irreversibly due to many reasons such as bacterial invasion (because of tooth decay or periodontitis), trauma (because of physical attack or temperature) that needs endodontic treatment.

Endodontic treatment or root canal treatment is the process of removing damaged pulp, sealing the root canal system to prevent bacterial invasion, eliminating infection and preserving remaining tooth tissue.

2. Why choose one-time endodontic treatment?

If endodontic treatment required at least 2-3 appointments to complete in the past, it is possible to do it in only one time with the help of machines and tools nowadays.

Previously, endodontic treatment required many appointments because:

• In the past, endodontic treatment mainly used manual instruments, which could not guarantee the infected pulp tissue removal in one checkup. It needed performing from 2 to 3 appointments and putting medicine to prevent infection between appointments.
• In the past, the used endodontic irrigation had a low concentration that cannot dissolve the remaining pulp tissue of the tooth. However, a higher concentration cannot be used because it has bad smell and can damage to the soft tissues of the mouth.
• In the past, it is impossible to completely isolate the working area from the oral environment, so saliva and oral fluid are still allowed to overflow into the canal that cannot ensure absolute sterility during the endodontic process.

So why is it possible to perform one-time endodontic treatment at Da Nang Implant Dental Clinic?

• Isolate the working area with a rubber dam, limit gum fluid and saliva that affects the treatment process.

Placing rubber dam plays an important role in endodontic treatment

• Accurately determine root canal length by apex locator

The apex locator helps determine exactly the canal length

• Clean the root canal system by the endodontic motors

The endodontic motors replace the previous manual endodontic tools

• Irrigate canals with NaOCl solution (5%) with ultrasonic vibrator

Ultrasonic vibrator combines NaOCl solution (5% ) to dissolve residual pulp tissue

The completion of one-time endodontic treatment instead of 1-2 weeks as before helps to shorten the treatment time. It still ensures the best treatment result because of complying with the principle of root canal therapy, which completely remove the damaged pulp tissue, ensure asepsis during cleaning and obturating the canal.