Small filling – big filling – root treatment – root tip resection – removing a tooth

Does this process look familiar to you?

Whether it does or not, we would like to explain why this happens. It may help some of you to avoid this, while others will at least realize that there is no such thing as bad teeth!


1. People rarely ever have bad teeth and if this is genetic, all of a person’s teeth are affected!

Why do you mostly have fillings in your side teeth? Find out here!

2. Good, now we know that your “bad teeth” are at least partly your own “fault”! Unfortunately, dentists only rarely inform their patients about why things like this happen, they usually just keep drilling, while your fillings keep getting bigger and bigger, until one fine day you need a root canal treatment.

The right way to perfom root treatment is … here we have a video for you, but be sure to come back after your trip to dental land!

3. Hopefully your root treatment was not performed the wrong way, without a coffer dam, enlargement and sterile instruments.

Now, your root canal may contain a bunch of bacteria from saliva, or unsterile instruments used during treatment. These bacteria continue to multiply unchecked. Your immune system does manage to get rid of some of them, but not all, and years later you develop a bone infection at the tip of your root, caused by the bacteria in your root canal.

4. This usually calls for a root tip resection – depicted here!

Without cleaning the canal (orthograde WSR), or sealing the canal from behind (retrograde WSR)this area can again start to cause problems, making it necessary to remove the tooth completely!

Imagine all the trouble you could have saved yourself if you had already known this – Dentalnews.en readers always have something to smile about!

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Risks of a root canal – root tip resection?

Posted by Dental News Team On March - 29 - 2010

Our topic in the next weeks is root canal treatment and its risks! (8/10)

If bone is already too badly inflamed after faulty root treatment, then it is no longer enough to clean out the inside of the tooth. The inflammation is too extensive. One option is to perform a root tip resection.

But root tip resection just means removing inflamed tissue, the cause of the inflammation, the contaminated canal, is left untreated. Either a revision is performed to redo root treatment as part of the operation – which is then referred to as root tip resection with orthograde filling, or the root canal is sealed up from behind – referred to as root tip resection with retrograde filling.

Why from behind? Well, sometimes it is no longer possible to perform a revision starting from the crown e.g. in the case of pivot teeth, or if the structure of the root canal is too complicated, or part of an instrument has broken off during treatment, etc. Depending on the circumstances, this sealing method can also be used to kill off the bacteria still left in the root canal, because you cut the bacteria off from their source of food, and the tooth is saved!

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