Many people don't understand why they need a root canal or really what a root canal is. A root canal, or root canal therapy as it's actually called in dentistry, is treating a tooth that's infected down into the root. It means decay has traveled past the enamel in the tooth and past the inner soft tissue and touched the root of the tooth that goes down into the base of the tooth.
There are many roots in every tooth, so you can have a number of root canals even in a single tooth if it gets infected. A root canal is a way of preserving the tooth rather than extracting it -- which is always the worst choice, unless the tooth has become so severely infected and then you would need to remove it and probably put a dental implant in it to preserve your natural oral health.
But as painful as sometimes it can be, the technology is changing more and more -- sometimes dentists use lasers now -- but generally with the right dentist, it is nowhere near as unpleasant as many people make it out to be. But it's an important way of preserving your tooth and so you're gonna need - if you have an infected tooth probably root canal therapy and then they'll crown the tooth to preserve it. It's a way of protecting your teeth, keeping them in your mouth and of course, getting the infection out of your mouth.
It means you've had some level of neglect. Now you may have done a microfracture in the tooth or you may have had an old filling that got infected underneath. It can be treated and it can be treated in a fairly comfortable way, more and more all the time with new technology.
