A root canal that is well done, and that is finished with a proper post, filling or crown, has a very high success rate. 85 % of root canal treatments last for a lifetime.

If a tooth becomes infected again years after root canal has be done, that tooth can often be retreated, which means that the root canal can be done again. However in rare cases where the root of the tooth is fractured or decayed, or if there is severe gum disease, the tooth would need to be extracted.

Links

• 10 myths and facts about root canals
• Est-ce que les traitements de canal fonctionnent vraiment?

Mild pain can be felt weeks after the procedure, and this mostly while eating and chewing on foods. This mild pain usually does not require painkiller medication.

If pain persists weeks after treatment, you should consult your dentist or endodontist. Sometimes minor adjustments are needed, but rarely complications might have occurred.

If you are lucky, no pain will be felt at all!

Links

• 10 myths and facts about root canals
• Est-ce que la douleur cesse immédiatement après un traitement de canal?

Usually if you have dental infection or inflammation and you chose not to proceed with a root canal, the other alternative is to extract your tooth. The ideal treatment to replace a missing tooth is a dental implant and it’s much more costly than a root canal.

How much does a root canal really costs? This depends of many factors. Firstly each country their own prices. Also a tooth can have many canals and many roots, each canal having to be treated, the more canals, the more expensive it is. Moreover, an endodontist, which is a dentist that has specialised in root canals, has higher rates than a general dentist.

Links

• 10 myths and facts about root canals
• Est-ce qu’un traitement de canal coûte cher?

Dentist recommend a root canal treatment on a tooth in order to save it if it has had a very advanced cavity or to relive pain caused by a tooth infection or inflammation of the nerve. With modern anaesthesia, a person undergoing root canal treatment should not feel any pain at all during the procedure.

In rare cases where severe dental infection occurs, numbing a tooth might be harder to achieve, and the dentist may decide to prescribe antibiotics prior to the treatment. Moreover, if the treatment seems very complicated to do, your dentist might decide to refer you to an endodontist, who is a dentist specialized in root canals.

Links

• 10 myths and facts about root canals
• Est-ce qu’un traitement de canal est une procédure douloureuse?

• Smoking is responsible for 30% of all deaths related to any cancer.
• Smoking is responsible for 85% of all deaths related to lung cancer.
• Cases of death related to cancer have decreased of 2.2% each year (from 1997 to 2006) because Canadians are smoking less.
• Lung cancer remains the type of cancer that has the least survival rates, 16% of affected patients are still alive after 5 years, whereas 62 % of patients of other cancers survive after 5 years.
• Lung cancer is the second most common cancer for both men and women; the first most common cancer is prostate cancer for men and breast cancer for women.

I know all humans beings are destined to die one day, but why not stop smoking and live a longer and healthier life!

Related Articles

• Smoking related to birth defects
• When can someone smoke after tooth extraction?
• Why is it Bad to Smoke after Tooth Extraction?

Links

• Canadian Cancer Society
• How smoking affects dental and oral health | Studio Dentaire
• Statistiques sur le tabagisme et le cancer

The character size is bigger making the words easier to read. I also like the fact that the sentences’ colour is dark, and they are displayed on a white background.

I had to put a header image on top of blog. I used three pictures which I think are well related to dental topics in general.

I hope this new design will make reading my blog posts more fun, which will encourage me to keep on writing informative and interesting articles for everyone to use. Enjoy!

Related articles

• Is a tooth alive?
• Dental tourism

Links

• Twenty Eleven – WordPress theme

Your dentist has, or will explain all that, but let’s go through the recovery instructions in details:

• Eat a light meal an hour or two before your appointment. Do you go to your appointment with an empty stomach, and do not eat a very heavy meal if you will have intravenous sedation.
• Make sure you have a couple of days off after your appointment to rest after the surgery.
• If you took medications or if the dentist used sedation, make sure there is someone who will drive you home after.
• After the procedure, leave the gauze in your mouth and bite on it for pressure, do this for at least 30 minutes or the time that your mouth bleeds.
• If the bleeding persists for more the 30 minutes, or if it starts again later in the evening, use more gauze, or bite down on a wet tea bag which works even better. Tannic acid found in tea helps reduce bleeding. It is normal if you wake up the following day and that your saliva is reddish from blood.
• For the first 24 hours, eat soft foods that are not too warm nor too cold.
• Rinse with warm water and sea salt, but starting 24 hours after your wisdom teeth have been removed, not the same day. The recipe is 1 teaspoon of sea salt in 1 glass (250 ml) of warm water.
• Use ice the first 24 hours on your face to reduce the swelling. If you do not have ice, use bags with frozen vegetables instead. If the procedure was difficult, swelling will occur and you might also see colour change on the skin.
• Have a couple of pillows under your head when sleeping. This will help reduce the swelling.
• Take your antibiotics and pain killers as prescribed by your dentist.
• Do not smoke for 48 to 72 hours! Smoking introduces toxins to the extraction site and can also dislodge the clots, which can cause dry socket.
• Do not use a straw to sip on liquids, as the pressure caused from the sipping can also dislodge clots and lead to dry socket.
• Do not spit, as the pressure can also dislodge the clots. If there is blood in your mouth, let it flow down your mouth and then wipe your lips.
• Do not play sports for 24 to 48 hours.
• Do not use mouthwash for 24 hours.

After one week, you should feel much better. Your gums will slowly get back to normal, and some people might feel like it’s totally healed. But put in mind the total healing time takes about 3 months, and during that time food can be stuck in the sockets and you need to rinse with salted water to clean them.

She is also a professor in the Faculty of Dentistry of McGill University and has also her own teaching academy of dental implants destined for dentists. In fact, this is where I took my first implant course and I was charmed by the enthusiasm, knowledge, and talent of Dr. Archambault. She has a unique way of transmitting her knowledge that captivates your attention and nourishes your interests. It is also during my classes at the academy that I placed my first dental implant in one patients and it was a success because I was well trained and well coached.

The implant school of Dr. Katya Archambault is called the Canadian Academy of improvement in implantology. It is a young academy that has great potential and of which many dentists will benefit from the knowledge that they will get.

Some would think that the risk remains low, and others would argue that their own mother smoked while she was pregnant. But it’s up to each woman to decide whether to take that chance or not.

A baby born with missing limbs would have life long challenges to adapt with society and live a normal life. But being a dentist myself who normally notices oral problems, the cleft lip defect related to smoking caught my attention immediately.

Cleft lip

A cleft lip looks like a fissure of the upper lip near the centre of the face. It can reach the nose or even affect part of the palate. Those defects can lead to other problems such as ear infections, speech and feeding problems, and having trouble maintaining a normal social life.

A baby born with a cleft lip can have aesthetic surgery as soon as 10 weeks after birth to correct the defect. Orthodontic treatment might also be required later on in life with cases of cleft palate if the jaws and teeth are affected are misaligned.

Other smoking impacts

Other than cleft lips and missing limbs, it is important to address all the problems related to smoking during pregnancy. Many chemicals in tobacco smoke, such as nicotine and carbon monoxide, are passed on to the baby through the placenta.

Here are some bad impacts on babies if their mother smoked while pregnant:

• Nicotine increases a baby’s heart rate and breathing movements.
• During pregnancy, mothers who smoke have a greater risk of miscarriages.
• During the birth, smoking mothers are more likely to have complications.
• The chances of a baby’s dying at birth or shortly thereafter are increased if the mother has smoked during pregnancy.
• Some of the chemicals passed on through the mother’s blood are known to cause cancer.
• Babies of women who smoked or were exposed to second-hand tobacco smoke during pregnancy are, on average, smaller at birth than babies of non-smoking mothers. Smoking mothers give birth to infants who weigh less than babies from non-smoking mothers. Newborns with a lower-than-average birth weight are more likely to get infections and have other health problems.
• There is a clear relationship between the number of cigarettes smoked during pregnancy and a slowdown in the growth of the foetus. These babies are also more prone to perinatal complications, illnesses and death.

My own mother smoked while she was pregnant with me and I turned out fine. Unfortunately she passed away from lung cancer. But when she was young, like all people of her generation, she didn’t know all the health hazards caused by smoking that we know today.

I hope this article will convince some women not to smoke when they are pregnant, or even better, to quit completely.

Related Articles

• Pregnancy and dental x-rays
• When can someone smoke after tooth extraction?
• How to provide the best dental care for your kids

Links

• Pregnancy: smoking and your body | Health Canada
• Smoking during pregnancy ‘raises birth defect risk’ | BBC
• Cleft lip and palate | Wikipedia
• How smoking affects dental and oral health | Studio Dentaire

Have you packed your passport, your camera, and your dental floss as well? Yes that’s right, because flossing is important at home and away from home. If your are planning a trip that will last a few weeks, not flossing your teeth can make you develop periodontal disease because remaining plaque initializes gum infection and inflammation. Cavities can even start in between your teeth if you don’t floss them.

It is therefore important to carry dental floss with you when you travel. It’s a very helpful and quiet travel companion Think of having waxed floss if the spaces between your teeth are very tight.

Toothbrush

A good old toothbrush is the most basic device for oral hygiene because it removes food debris after a meal, and clears up most of dental plaque. Brushing your teeth is well completed when you finish with dental floss. An electric toothbrush can even do a better job than a regular toothbrush, especially if you have braces or an orthodontic appliance. But if you travel with your electric toothbrush, don’t forget to take the charger with you too!

Remember as well that your dentist recommends using a soft or ultra-soft bristled toothbrush, since hard bristled toothbrushes can damage tooth enamel and irritate the gums.

Toothpaste

You can always buy toothpaste from wherever you are travelling to. Any supermarket from all around the world has toothpaste to sell. But some people have toothpaste preferences whether it’s the taste or if they need a tooth sensitivity fighter toothpaste, and are better off bringing their own.

Don’t forget that only 100 ml of toothpaste is allowed on your carry-on luggage when you travel by airplane.

Sugarless gum

Sometimes you are hungy and you eat a quick snack, or sometimes you want to try irresistibly delicious local food and you can’t necessarily brush and floss right after. Chewing on sugarless gum for about 10 minutes after a meal can stimulate the production of saliva in your mouth. Saliva is a natural cleaner which also reduces the acidity in your mouth.

Chewing gum does not replace brushing and flossing your teeth, but it’s a temporary solution that also makes your breath more fresh!

Interdental brush such as the proxabrush

When you are wearing braces or an orthdontic appliance, it’s a good idea to bring an interdental brush with you on your trip.

Sometimes even dental floss or an electric toothbrush doesn’t remove a tiny piece or rice stuck between your tooth and the metallic wire. But in a case like that, a proxabrush can do wonders.

An interdental brush can also be useful for people who have periodontal disease with receding gums. It’s also practical to remove debris stuck in spaces in between teeth that are difficult to clean.

Related Articles

• How to stop bleeding gums?
• Is chewing gum good for your teeth?
• 5 reasons to floss your teeth every day
• Why is oral hygiene important?

Links

• Oral Hygiene Kit for Travellers
• 5 articles d’hygiène buccale à apporter lorsqu’on voyage
• Oral hygiene: keeping your teeth clean
• Smile For A Lifetime!