Now, let's get to the harsh truth life is busy these days. Juggling professional tasks, family life, and having some personal time makes spending several hours at the dentist office one more thing you just cannot afford. However, when your dentist says that there is a severe infection of one of your teeth and you need to undergo endodontic treatment, the first question that pops up in your head is associated not only with the pain but also with the length of the whole procedure.
Are you rushing and googling such questions like how long does the root canal take? Perhaps, you heard terrible stories from your friends and relatives saying that the procedure took ages, and you had to take several days off work.
The good news is that dental treatment has greatly changed within the past decade. Gone are the days when you would be subjected to extremely long and exhausting procedures in the clinic. However, if you are worried about the procedure and wonder how much time you should allocate in your agenda, then let us tell you all the details of the process.
The Baseline: Average Root Canal Appointment Length
If you are seeking a simple answer in the form of a number, you may feel reassured to know that root canal treatment typically lasts somewhere between 45 minutes and 90 minutes.
It is crucial to recognize that this information is only an estimate. The time required for a root canal treatment varies and is not a uniform amount. The professional dentist will do what needs to be done; they will be precise but will not rush because their priority is to remove all the infected tissues and sterilize the tooth. There are several aspects that contribute to this time.
What Factors Influence Root Canal Treatment Duration?
All human mouths are completely different from each other, and all individual teeth possess their own architecture problems. There are several factors that influence the length of your root canal procedure. The first and the most important one is the location of the infected tooth.
Your teeth have different structure and form. The teeth that you use to bite something (incisors and canines) have only one root canal – straight and wide one. Due to the fact that the access to such kind of teeth is easy, the cleaning process does not take much time and can be completed within 45 minutes.
Molars are different teeth with many complicated features. A molar may have three, four or even five small canals. It takes a lot of time to navigate through them. So, cleaning such teeth takes almost 90 minutes.
Another factor is the severity of the infection you have. In case when the nerve became inflamed and you visited a dental specialist.
But if you have neglected the warning signs and allowed an infection to travel from the pulp all the way to the jawbone resulting in the formation of a severe abscess, then your dentist will need to take additional time to flush and disinfect the area to make sure that all the bacteria are removed from there.
Lastly, the equipment available at your clinic has a tremendous effect on how long you’ll have to be there. Old methods of endodontic treatment depended on stainless steel files to clean the tooth manually. Modern top-notch clinics use rotary endodontic tools, which are extremely flexible and efficient and can clean and shape the canal significantly quicker than traditional methods.
The Big Debate: Single Visit vs Multiple Visit Root Canal
Many years back, carrying out a treatment through endodontics involved a minimum of two or even three appointments in the clinics. Today, things have really changed, and patients often wonder how many visits for root canals are actually needed. And here comes the issue about whether a single visit or multiple visit root canal is preferable.
The traditional multiple visit RCT divides the procedure into stages. In the initial session of the treatment, the tooth is accessed by the dentist, removal of most of the infection is done, and an antibacterial medicine is filled within the tooth cavity. The tooth is sealed temporarily and the patient is sent home. The second visit involves removal of the temporary filling and cleaning up of the tooth, after which sealing of the tooth permanently using gutta-percha is done.
While some cases may require the use of multi-visit procedures due to very difficult infections that take time to drain, most other cases no longer need them.
As a result of phenomenal advancements in dental image taking and sterilization techniques, the new-age practice of dentistry is one visit dentistry. High-tech clinics manage to combine all the important procedures, which are diagnosis, cleaning, disinfection, shaping, and sealing in one smooth session. One visit dentistry makes sure that the patient doesn’t have to suffer the frustration of living with a vulnerable temporary filling for days on end.
The Next Steps: Crown Fitting and Follow-Up Visit
In analyzing the total amount of time spent on the procedure of your root canal treatment during one sitting, it is important to take into account further dental restoration. In other words, your tooth will receive an appropriate root canal treatment, which will help in saving its root and eliminate your pain; however, the process of healing does not end there.
Namely, after the living tissue inside the tooth has been removed, its remaining shell is going to lose the internal hydration and become rather fragile with time. Therefore, in case you will apply too much pressure while biting on your restored molar, it is very likely that the latter will get fractured. Thus, in order to avoid this, the tooth needs to be protected with the help of a specially crafted porcelain crown.
For this purpose, there will be an important follow-up procedure required. Namely, after your root canal treatment will be carried out, your dentist is going to make exact digital impressions of your mouth and send them to a specialized dental laboratory. One to two weeks later, you are going to come back for the crown adjustment procedure, which is extremely quick and absolutely painless.
Seamless Dental Appointment Scheduling at The Dental Roots
We know that your time is one of your most valuable assets. When you are suffering from a throbbing toothache, navigating complicated dental appointment scheduling and facing weeks of prolonged treatment is simply unacceptable.
At The Dental Roots, recognized as a premier destination for advanced dental care with luxury clinics across New Delhi and Gurgaon, we have engineered our practice to respect your schedule. We are proud to be the only dental clinic in the Delhi NCR region boasting a core team of over five highly qualified endodontic specialists.
By utilizing state-of-the-art 3D CBCT imaging, high-powered operating microscopes, and laser-assisted sterilization, our specialists can safely and effectively execute single-visit root canals with unparalleled precision. What used to take multiple stressful visits can now be meticulously completed in a single sitting, allowing you to walk in with pain and walk out the very same day with a permanently restored, healthy smile.
Do not let the fear of a massive time commitment stop you from getting the urgent medical care you need. Modern dentistry is designed to be fast, highly predictable, and entirely comfortable. Reach out to the experts at The Dental Roots today, and let us help you get back to your busy life, pain-free.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Dental Roots Editorial Team
Written by our panel of specialist dentists & patient educators
