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| THE FACTS |
You are in The Facts | |||||||||||
The Facts
About 95% of all root canal treatments are successful. Endodontics was recognized as a dental specialty in 1963. A recent survey showed that patients who have experienced root canal treatment are six times more likely to describe it as "painless" than patients who have not had root canal treatment. Your jaws place as much as 128 pounds of pressure on your teeth when you chew, bite, clench, or grind. The pulp nourishes your tooth during your growing years. A fully developed tooth can survive without the pulp. The root of your tooth is usually twice as long as the crown, the part you see above the gumline. A tooth can have up to four root canals. Endodontic treatment, often referred to as root canal treatment, is a common dental procedure that saves damaged teeth from having to be extracted. With properly performed root canal procedures, teeth can function normally for a lifetime. Endodontic treatment is usually less expensive and time consuming than having a tooth extracted and replaced with a bridge, removable partial denture or implant. Modern techniques and anesthetics make root canal treatment comfortable for the patient. Patients who have been advised to have teeth extracted should ask if the teeth could be saved with endodontic treatment. Endodontists are dentists who have two or more years of additional training in root canal procedures. After completing dental school, they limit their practices to endodontics, concentrating on root canal procedures. Endodontists treat both routine and complex cases. They specialize in diagnosing and treating oral pain and in handling dental emergencies, such as toothaches and teeth that have been knocked out. The most injured area of the body during contact sports is the mouth. More than 200,000 injuries to the mouth and jaw occur each year. Nearly half of sports-related mouth injuries occur in basketball and baseball. Advances in dental research continue to save Americans $4 billion a year. Since high schools and colleges began to require use of facemasks and mouthguards for football, about 200,000 injuries to the face and mouth have been prevented each year. You swallow approximately 2,000 times per day, which causes the upper and lower teeth to come together and push against the skull. It is estimated that more than 1 billion amalgam restorations (fillings) are placed annually. According to the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, an estimated 24 million adult Americans are totally without teeth. Almost half of the adult population are missing at least one tooth. About one in three people suffer from bruxism, or teeth grinding, which can easily be treated. Fifteen percent of children acquire this behavior. At least 45 million adults in the United States suffer at some time from sensitive teeth. Most adults reported that they had seen a dentist within the past year. Over half (53%) said they last saw a dentist less than six months ago, while an additional 25% saw a dentist between six months ago and a year. Though dentistry has been around in one form or another since the days of primitive man, painless extraction wasn⿿t available until the 1830s. In the beginning, teeth were removed with a well-placed chisel and a hard swing of a mallet. Thousands of years later, during peaks of the great Greek and Roman civilizations, the chisel-and-mallet method was abandoned in favor of forceps. |
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