Most root canals last for decades without a sound. But teeth are living things, not machine parts, so once in a while a treated one comes back to bother you. The cause isn’t always obvious. In some teeth a canal is narrow or curves hard enough that a tiny branch of it never got fully cleaned the first time. In others the trouble is an old crown that’s been leaking for a while, letting bacteria work their way back toward the root. Decay plays a part sometimes, slipping under the edge of a filling that has gotten old, and an occasional fresh crack does it too. You tend to notice when it happens, usually as soreness when you bite down or that old familiar ache coming back. Once in a while a small bump shows up on the gum next to the tooth.
There’s a reflex, and some general dentists have it too, to look at a tooth that’s flaring again and call it a failure that needs pulling. We’re slower to say that. A lot of our central-Austin patients seem to like that about us, maybe because they’re the type who want the why and not just the verdict. The better answer is frequently a retreatment. We go back into the tooth and take out the old sealing material. Then we hunt for any canal that got missed and clean it properly, disinfect the whole thing, and seal it back up. Put a good crown on top and that tooth can keep working for years more. It spares you the longer, pricier route of pulling it and paying for an implant or a bridge later on.
The convenience matters here too, because this is the medical district. A lot of the folks we see in Rosedale and Allandale, and the streets right off Bull Creek, work in or around the 38th Street hospitals. The last thing a busy clinician wants is to turn into a multi-visit patient at some specialist clear across town. So we’ll look at the old root canal and give it to you straight, whether retreating it makes sense or whether the tooth is honestly past saving, and we do the work and the crown in one place. The honest read comes first. Then the least invasive thing that actually fixes it.
