Root Canal Retreatment

Proper oral care after root canal treatment is essential to preserving your teeth for your lifetime. But there have been cases where a tooth that has been treated doesn't heal properly, which can result in pain or disease in months or even years after treatment. Should your tooth fail to heal or if you're tooth develops new problems, this is where root canal retreatment is utilized. Root canal retreatment is a procedure that can save your tooth.

Why do I need another endodontic procedure?

There are a variety of reasons that may result in your tooth not healing as expected after a medical procedure, which includes:

• Undetected complications in the canal anatomy during the first procedure. 
• Delay of crown placement or other restoration during endodontic treatment.

Additionally, new problems can arise that can put your tooth at risk even after a successfully treated, such as:

• During the initial procedure narrow or curved canals weren't treated.
• Bacteria can be exposed to the root canal filling material through new decay, this can cause infections in the tooth.
• New infections can be introduced if you have a loose, cracked or broken crown or filling.
• Tooth fractures.

What will happen during retreatment?  

We start the process with a consultation session where we will discuss your treatment options. Once we review the options if the decision to undergo root canal retreatment this will require us to reopen your tooth to access the root canal filling material. During this time the disassembling and removal of complex restorative materials such as a crown, post and core materials in order to access to the root canals.

Once the canal filling material has been removed, we can clean the canals and then conduct a thorough examination of the inside of your tooth, during this time we will be looking for additional canals or unusual anatomy that requires treatment. When we have finished cleaning the canals, we will then fill and seal the canals to allow us to insert a temporary filling in the tooth.

In some cases, canals might be unusually narrow or blocked, if this is the case we may have to further discuss surgery that would require us to make an incision to allow the other end of the root to be sealed.