Clinical Tips 6: Part 2, Big Cavity

Picking back up on this clinical tips earlier: Big cavity part 1.

We pick up back here with our pulp exposure and root canal.

We do root canals for a lot of different reasons, in this case the diagnosis was ‘irreversible pulpits’ which basically means that the nerve or pulp of the tooth is infected, and the body will not be able to heal it on its own.

The tooth is built back up, and here we are trying to optimize efficiency – so we scan for the onlay before doing the root canal. This lets us keep the appointment shorter for our patient!

While the restoration is being made, we do the root canal. This upper premolar had two canals, so you can see we instrumented and filled them each individually.

I jokingly call this next step ‘purple passion’ – but what we do is cover up over the access holes into the root canal system with composite. We use purple composite here to mark that the root canal has been completed, and let someone else who may be drilling into this tooth later in life know not to drill any deeper here.

Our finished results, a tooth with a hole is put back together, the onlay restoration is bonded to the tooth, and we have preserved as much remaining tooth structure as possible. We love this type of dentistry – it is conservative and precise, and provided the tooth future restorative ‘lives’ in the future.

Stay tuned for more clinical tips with Dr. Bishop!