Root Canal Therapy

A tooth that has had a root canal treatment performed is a dead tooth, a taxidermised tooth left in your jaw!

Sounds horrible right, well yes and no.

For decades root canal therapy has been performed on teeth as a way of allowing patients to keep teeth that otherwise they would have had to have extracted. In most cases, teeth were either highly infected due to bacterial infection or became non vital (dead) due to trauma or other means.

Unfortunately, research now shows that 100% of root canal filled teeth fail... eventually, some fail quicker than others, with some teeth lasting a good 20 years before infection results again. However, if the tooth was truly clean of all bacteria then why would you get a secondary infection? The answer is pretty simple. Even with the majority of current endodontic procedures the root anatomy of teeth is so complex that not all the bacteria can physically be removed or killed using standard treatments. Some bacteria remains, some of which are alive and stagnate in the microscopic lateral canals and porosities in the tooth.

These pathogenic bacteria breakdown the residual organic tissue releasing highly toxic and potentially carcinogenic hydrogen sulfide compounds as by-products from anaerobic metabolism releasing them into the surrounding tissue which enters the lymphatic system and eventually ends up in your blood stream with the ability to travel systemically.

Standard or traditional root filled teeth have been shown to be an interfering field or neuromodulatory trigger in the body and as such should be avoided and if already present removed whether symptomatic or not.

We do not perform root canal therapy as part of our philosophy and as a general rule advocate against such treatment and assist patients with the removal of teeth that have historically had this treatment if desired.