THERE ARE MANY dental specialties for treating different oral health issues. Orthodontists can help fix crooked teeth and pediatric dentists are great at working with kids. Periodontists can help with gum disease and prosthodontics can create excellent false teeth. The dentists who can save a tooth so that it doesn’t have to be pulled? Those are the endodontists.
Endodontics exists as a dental specialty to focus on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases and injuries of the dental pulp inside of teeth. An endodontist will also examine the patient’s gums and other tissues that impact the health and performance of their teeth.
Working inside tiny spaces is the endodontist’s superpower. A tooth is already a small object, so the canals within the roots are even smaller. They’re actually smaller than Roosevelt’s ear on the dime. That’s how small of a space endodontists have to work within to save teeth. It takes years of training, education, and experience, as well as steady hands and a lot of high-tech equipment such as operating microscopes.
Why is it so important to save a tooth, though? It might seem like less of a hassle to simply pull it instead of saving it, but the reason we fight so hard to save every tooth is that no dental implant has yet been made that can do a better job of being a tooth than an actual tooth.
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