Our practice's standard of care
We want our root canal treatments to succeed. Period.
Scheduling
We strive to meet your sense of urgency balanced with patient needs in scheduling your patient. We keep two emergency root canal treatment appointments every day to care for your patients in pain. We can schedule consults either the same day or the next. We also keep urgent treatment appointments so we can usually get anyone in discomfort scheduled for treatment within a few days.
Consult appointments
Our consult appointments are dual-focused. Beyond confirming the diagnosis, we evaluate a patient's tolerance for treatment, level of pain, benefits of pharmacological management, and preparedness to begin root canal treatment. We have found only about a third of patients are prepared to start treatment at the initial visit. Some are in too much pain to achieve profound anesthesia. Some want an anxiolytic to deal with the treatment as a whole or the rubber dam in particular. Other patients have financial issues that need to be addressed before they're ready to commit to the procedure. Some have medical issues that need to be managed. There's a wide range of reasons all leading to our policy of scheduling consults first. However, we are always willing to make exceptions which is why we keep two emergency treatment appointments a day.
Controlling infection
Since root canal treatment is about controlling infection, our treatment protocol is guided by the best research available. That means if there is active infection, success goes from 75% if treated in one visit to 96% if treated in two (or three) visits. Therefore, many of our initial treatments are multiple visits. This is always the case with retreatments.
Standards
Like other endodontists in the area, I use rubber dam isolation, ultrasonic locator, and an operating dental microscope. If you are interested in observing a procedure, please let us know. We'd love to have you.
I also stay current in the latest materials available, techniques, and research through journals and continuing education conferences.
Endodontic case difficulty assessment form and guidelines and an article on those asessment guidelines
Endodontic treatment options
Latex allergy
Antibiotic prophylaxsis
Bisphosonates
NICO lesions
IADT Guidelines for Evaluation and Management of Traumatic Dental Injuries
Use of silver points in root canal treatment
Paraformaldehyde-filling-materials
