Root canals can be careful, quick, and relatively pain-free bringing you immediate relief and saving your natural tooth.
saving your natural tooth
In a root canal procedure, the pulp of the tooth (the living tissue inside) is removed and the resulting space is filled with special, medicated dental materials that restore the tooth to full function. Using root canal therapy not only preserves your natural tooth, extending its lifetime, it also protects and preserves the jaw bone and other supporting tissues around the tooth.
Wherever possible, saving your natural tooth will also save you from more pain and expense down the road.
There are a number of symptoms that suggest root canal therapy may be necessary:
The Root Canal Treatment Plan
A root canal treatment usually requires one or two office visits and is performed by either a dentist or an endodontist.
Here is how we perform your root canal:
Diagnosis and Treatment Plan
The first step requires an x-ray of the tooth and the surrounding bone to find out what’s causing your symptoms. Your specialist may prescribe antibiotics to help control infection and inflammation. The pressure from infected swelling is what makes an abscess so painful and is often the cause of pain during a root canal. Reducing this inflammation in advance removes this factor during the procedure.
Prepping the Tooth
When we’re ready to perform the root canal, we will patiently numb the area, including your gums, teeth and tissues. Your comfort and peace-of-mind are important to us. Once you’re comfortable, an access hole is drilled into the tooth. The pulp, bacteria, decayed nerve tissue, and related debris are removed.
Sealing the Tooth
Depending on the severity of the abscess, we may put some medicine inside the tooth to completely clear up any infection. If the procedure requires multiple visits, a temporary filling will be applied. At this point, you will already feel some relief. Only when your tooth is thoroughly cleaned and healthy can it be permanently sealed.
the cost of a filling in eugene
The cost of dental treatment varies widely, but saving the tooth with a root canal is more cost-efficient in the long run. With a typical insurance plan, root canal therapy has an average out-of-pocket cost of around $200 to $500+.
After an oral exam, we would be happy to provide you with an accurate quote for your insurance company so you can find out your actual out-of-pocket costs. Without insurance, you can expect to pay anywhere from $600 to $1200+ for treatment.
Why is there such a wide ballpark estimate of the cost?
When we generate a quote for root canal therapy we consider factors like:
No dental practice can provide an accurate quote over the phone. Every case is different so it's important to speak with a dentist who can evaluate your unique situation and provide you with all your treatment options for your consideration.
is there an alternative treatment to root canals?
An abscess or infection in your tooth is extremely dangerous and considered an urgent health matter. Many people think of root canals as some sort of ‘lesser evil’ to end excruciating dental pain. More important than that, root canals remove an infection that can spread and become life-threatening, requiring much more urgent and invasive care. This is why we work tirelessly to fight the reputation that root canal therapy has gained and why your comfort and peace-of-mind is so important to us.
If you think you may have an infection but you really don’t want a root canal, we strongly encourage you to reach out to us anyway. We will not perform any procedure without your full understanding and consent and may have alternative options for you with the ultimate goal of resolving your infection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Thanks to modern techniques and technology and a compassionate dental philosophy, our highly trained team of dentists and assistants can provide root canal treatments with minimal to no pain at all.
If you're feeling anxious about the procedure, we have several sedation techniques we can use to help relieve your anxiety and make the procedure as comfortable as possible.
By the time you realize you need a root canal, your tooth pulp and nerve have already begun to decay. This infected tissue will never fully heal and would only become infected again.
Removing the pulp is the only safe option.
A root canal treatment usually requires one or two office visits. Simple or minor root canal cases usually take about 60 to 80 minutes of treatment, while a more complex case take longer — around 100 minutes.
That depends on what sort of insurance coverage you have. After a consultation, we can provide you with an estimate of what your patient portion will be. We cannot guarantee your exact patient portion but will do our best.
Regardless of your insurance's potential contributions, we strongly encourage you to make a root canal a high priority. It's an important procedure that can prevent your tooth from needing to be extracted.
You typically need a dental crown after a root canal on your back grinding teeth, molars and premolars. Front teeth, canines, and incisors may not require a dental crown.
