A root canal is the commonly used term for the main canals within the tooth. These are part of the natural cavity within a tooth that is the tooth nerve. The parts of the tooth nerve are the dental pulp chamber , the main canals, and sometimes more intricate anatomical branches that may connect the root canals to each other or to the root surface of the tooth.
This sometimes becomes infected and inflamed,generally due to caries or tooth fractures that allow microorganisms, mostly bacteria from the oral flora or their byproducts, access to the pulp chamber or the root canals; the infected tissue is removed by a surgical intervention known as endodontic therapy and commonly called a root canal. So Endodontic therapy is a sequence of treatment for the pulp of a tooth whose end result is the elimination of infection and protection of the decontaminated tooth from microbial invasion.
Root canal procedure: 1. unhealthy tooth, drilling, filing with endofile 2. rubber filling and crown
Although this set of procedures is commonly referred to as a root canal, this term is imprecise; root canals and their associated pulp chamber are the anatomical hollows within a tooth which are naturally inhabited by nerve tissue, blood vessels and a number of other cellular entities, whereas endodontic therapy includes the complete removal of these structures, the subsequent cleaning, shaping and decontamination of these hollows with the use of tiny files and irrigating solutions and the obturation, or filling, of the decontaminated root canals with an inert filling, such as gutta percha and a usually eugenol-based cement.
Usually, when the root canal therapy is finished, the tooth has to be restore with a crown.
