Endodontic Surgery

Endodontic surgery can help save your tooth in a variety of situations. The benefit of choosing endodontic surgery could be a healthy, functioning, natural tooth for the rest of your life.

Usually, a tooth that has undergone a root canal can last the rest of your life and never need further endodontic treatment. However, in a few cases, a tooth may not heal properly or might become reinfected.

A tooth may become painful or diseased months or even years after successful treatment. If this occurs and root canal retreatment is not deemed possible, then surgery may help save your tooth.

Sometimes, nerve calcification may make a canal too narrow for our instruments to disinfect the inside of the tooth properly to its end. In these cases, we may perform endodontic surgery to clean and seal the remainder of the canal from the end of the tooth.

Surgery may be used as a diagnostic tool if you have persistent symptoms but no problems appear on your X-ray. In such a case, surgery will enable us to examine the entire root of your tooth using high-power illumination/magnification, find the problem, and provide treatment.

Surgery may also be performed to treat damaged root surfaces or surrounding bone.

Apicoectomy (Root-End Resection)

Although many surgical procedures can be performed to save a tooth, the most common is called apicoectomy, or root-end resection. When inflammation or infection persists in the bony area around the end of your tooth after a root canal procedure, Dr. D’Addario may advise you to undergo an apicoectomy.

In this procedure, the endodontist opens the gum tissue near the tooth to see the underlying bone and remove any inflamed or infected tissue. The very end of the root is also removed.

A small filling may be placed in the root to seal the end of the root canal, and a few stitches or sutures are placed in the gums to help the tissue heal properly. Over a period of months, the bone heals around the end of the root.

Other types of Endodontic Surgery

In certain cases, a procedure called intentional replantation may be performed. In this procedure, a tooth is extracted, treated with an endodontic procedure while it is out of the mouth, then replaced in its socket.

Other surgeries Dr. D’Addario might perform include dividing a tooth in half, repairing an injured root, or even removing one or more roots. He will be happy to discuss the specific type of surgery your tooth requires.

Endodontic Surgery Alternatives

Often, the only alternative to surgery is extraction of the tooth. The extracted tooth must then be replaced with an implant, bridge, or removable partial denture to restore chewing function and to prevent adjacent teeth from shifting.

No matter how effective modern artificial tooth replacements are, nothing is as good as your natural tooth.