Ascending Canals?!
Question: I had a root canal performed on a tooth and later had the tooth removed. After the root canal the tooth continued to hurt and became infected. My dentist had to pull the tooth because I had ascending canals. Does anyone know how common this is?
Answers: I had a root canal performed on a tooth and later had the tooth removed. After the root canal the tooth continued to hurt and became infected. My dentist had to pull the tooth because I had ascending canals. Does anyone know how common this is?
These are called accessory canals. They are small canals that "shoot off" from the main canals. They are so small that your dental professional cannot effectively remove the nerve tissue. Usually a dentist will send you to an endodontist (a root canal specialist) to retreat the tooth before they will extract the tooth. It is not very common but is not rare.
Are you sure you got that right? Don't know what "ascending" canals are. It's possible they were calcified (blocked), or perhaps a canal was missed and not treated. There are a number of reasons why a root canal can fail, and sometimes there is no apparent reason. Sometimes the reason becomes apparent after the tooth is extracted--as with a fractured root, for instance.
Steve Bornfeld, DDS