Whats an apicectomy?

[Baz]

Helllo

I have been told by my local dentist that my upper second tooth from the front needs to have an apicectomy at the local hospital. He did not have time to explain to me in detail what an apicectomy involves but he has referred me to a local hospital consultant to have the procedure done there. I would like to know more about it before I see the consultant.

I would like to know if the apicectomy is going to hurt, is it likely to cause any problems afterwards and how successful is it overall?

[Dr Vahid Motahar]

Hi,

Thank you for your post.

When a tooth develops infection and its nerve becomes dead or necrotic, then it needs to be root treated, otherwise known as root canal treatment.

In root canal treatment the aim is to try to debride the nerve house, also known as the pulp/canal, and remove the infection and the bacteria from the canal in the root of the tooth.

The most difficult part of this process and least predictable in terms of outcome of the root canal treatment is the cleaning and debridement of the very end of the canal and the root, otherwise known as apex. Once a root canal is completed and it is of reasonable quality, the infection should subside. If it does not, alternative is redoing the root canal treatment or apicectomy.

Apicectomy is a surgical procedure where an access is made to the end or apex of the root of the tooth and then this ending is removed to remove the infected section that root canal alone could not fix. If root canal is of good quality and the apicectomy is done correctly then there is high success rate for several years or in some cases decaieds.

As in any other surgical or dental procedure, it is painless and should be pain free if full and effective local anaesthesia is achieved. If it is not pain free then it means full anaesthesia has not been achieved and that should be corrected.