Are Root Canals Safe

Are Root Canals Safe?

As with many medical procedures, you will find people that insist that root canals are not a safe procedure and that no one should ever have one. These people are following the information found in a study done in the early 1900's by Dr. Weston Price. This study concluded that infected material and bacteria are left in the tooth and continue to infect the body after the root canal is finished, therefore infection remains in the tooth and surrounding jaw bone.

As a result of these out of date comments, the dental community has been accused of everything from total ignorance of this situation, to deliberately covering up these conclusions.

The American Association of Endodontists (AAE), whose website may be found at http://www.aae.org, states that this information is based on old, imprecise root canal tecniques as well as a lack of sterilization methods that are used today. Today, root canals are a safe procedure because ultrasonic instruments combined with antibiotic pastes are used to clean out the microscopic ends of root tips and help avoid dental infection.

New instruments, such as sonar locators which are used to find the exact end of a root so that the entire length can be filled and sealed using biocompatible material that was not available decades ago, also make the procedure safe and effective.

While there can be no quarrel with the fact that leaving a decaying and dead tooth in your mouth is not safe, but this is not done today by competent dentists and endodontists. Therefore, a general fear of having a root canal is not warranted. There is definite medical evidence that shows that dental infections can cause serious medical problems and can be life threatening, but modern techniques and equipment have removed most of that fear from the equation.

Oddly enough, this idea that dental infections can cause other health problems was the original concern of Dr. Price. We now know that dental infections can cause heart attacks, strokes, and low birth weight babies. They can also cause diabetics to have higher and more abnormal blood glucose levels.

Research studies which were performed in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as those conducted in later years, showed no relationship between having had a root canal done and the presence of illness. Indeed, researchers found that people who had undergone root canal therapy were no more likely to be ill than people without them.

Over the past several years, however, a very small number of dentists and physicians have been claiming that teeth that have received root canal treatment can contribute to illness and disease in the body. Again, this claim can be traced to the outdated research performed by Dr. Weston Price from 1910-1930. His research stated that bacteria trapped in the teeth during root canal treatment can cause almost any type of disease, including arthritis, heart disease, kidney disease, and others.

There are all kinds of bacteria in your teeth and mouth at all times, including those necessary to good health. This has been an accepted fact for many years. But the simple presence of bacteria does not constitute an "infection" and is not necessarily a threat to a person's health.

More recent attempts to copy the research of Dr. Price (and verify or disprove its accuracy) have been unsuccessful. Researchers now believe that the earlier findings were most likely caused by poor sanitation and imprecise research techniques that were more common in the early 1900s than today.

These more recent studies support the truth we report today — that teeth that receive proper endodontic treatment do not cause illness and that root canals are safe.

Despite advances in the field of dental health and a great effort on all concerned to present the facts accurately, there are still many misconceptions surrounding root canal treatment and other procedures. As always, when considering any medical procedure, you should get as much information as you can about all of your options. Your dentist or endodontist will be able to answer many of your questions, and if you still have concerns, it is often wise to seek a second opinion.

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