1515 Palisade Avenue, Fort Lee, NJ 07024
Tel: (201) 969-0990
Protect your natural teeth!
If you have pain or discomfort in a previously treated tooth, additional treatment can be discussed. Most of the time, root canal therapy is effective at permanently relieving tooth pain and halting infection of the tooth pulp. But occasionally, as in any medical procedure, the body may not heal as we expect it to.
After a period of time, you may experience pain in the affected tooth again — or, even if you have no symptoms, x-rays may reveal that infection is still present near the tooth's roots. In that case, you may need root canal retreatment.
There are several reasons why your root canal treatment may not have succeeded at first. The “canals” themselves are slender, forking passageways deep inside the tooth that enclose nerves and blood vessels: the tooth's soft “pulp.” They can be so narrow and intricate that some may have gone undetected, or failed to respond to treatment the first time. Or, the canals might have become recontaminated via a number of routes: a delayed or ineffective crown restoration, new tooth decay, advancing gum disease, or a cracked or fractured tooth. Any of these conditions could result in reinfection.
If initial root canal (endodontic) therapy has failed, the first thing to do is evaluate your options. Besides retreatment, the alternatives may include endodontic surgery or extraction (removal) of the tooth. However, a missing tooth should be replaced by a dental implant, a bridge or a partial denture as soon as possible — and none of these are simple or inexpensive options. That's part of the reason we prefer to help you retain your natural teeth whenever possible through endodontic retreatment.
