Root Canal for a Front Tooth: No Need to Worry

I had a root canal surgery done last week. Surprisingly, there was minimal drilling(!) It was a small tooth at the front, not sure how true the previous sentence is as far as the larger back teeth are concerned.

In any case, first he drilled for 5 seconds to get access to the root canal, then at the end, he drilled for less than 10 seconds to even out the new filling.

That was all! I felt bad about having taken one of my two remaining Prednisone pills before the procedure.

Despite the minimal exposure to noise, I got a spike the next day.

But the day after it appeared that the spike was gone.

These front teeth don't require a crown. So if you need a root canal done on one of your front teeth, don't worry too much about it.

 

How come you've changed your tune so much Bill?

 

What do you mean?

If you are talking about my recent advice to extract a tooth instead of having a crown done, then what drives it is the fact that a crown involves a Lot of drilling (with all of the tooth surfaces having to be obliterated). Above I was pointing out that a root canal for a Front tooth involves minimal (as in less than 30 seconds) of drilling.

 

@Bill Bauer Did the dentist use (or planned to use but you could opt for another alternative) some kind of ultra sound device during the root canal?

Seems to be used by some dentists (according to horrific youtube-videos about the procedures), but maybe only on molars...

Sorry about bringing to life such an old threat. It came up during my searching on the forum for tips about this, as I happen to have come in a situation now where on of my front teeth may require a root canal.

 

I cancelled my appointment with the root canal specialist. I will have this done by my dentist (who is a four hour drive away) who seems to care about not making my tinnitus worse. I am reasonably sure that this dentist won't use the ultra sound device. Thank you for letting me know about it, I will want to mention it to my dentist just to make sure that he doesn't use it.

 

Yes, I really don't like the idea of the ultrasonic devices "spreading" to more and more types of uses.

But I might have misunderstood you somewhat; I was referring to the 1st post in this thread, written Jul 30 2018, where you wrote you already had a root canal treatment of a front tooth. This kind of ultrasonic equipment was not used at that time then I guess?

EDIT: Sorry, forgot to quote to make a notice appear for you of my reply, so I just write your name here, @Bill Bauer

 

Definitely not!

 

Would be really interesting to know how it went, if the dentist was reluctant to not use ultrasonic tools or not, and what to be observant about for people with tinnitus - I guess this is a molar?

 

My appointment is coming up soon.

The tooth is a "premolar"