Dentistry Gains a New Vision

In recent times, the quality of dental education in dental schools is increasing. Technology provides dentistry with dozens of new instruments almost every year. At the same time, awareness of oral and dental health in our society has increased considerably compared to the past. This places greater responsibility on dentists and leads to a change in perspective on treatment," said Prof. Dr. Enver Sedat Küçükay, Head of the Department of Endodontics at Istanbul Okan University Dental Hospital, providing important information.

Dental Education is Now More Qualified

The quality of dental education in dental schools is increasing every day. This is greatly due to increased participation of our instructors in international conferences and research results becoming immediately available to and applied by everyone.

Technology Has Given Dentistry a New Vision

Technology provides dentistry with dozens of new instruments almost every year. When these innovations are properly examined and used for their intended purpose, they become very beneficial in providing quality treatment. On the other hand, while oral and dental health awareness has not reached a sufficient level in society, awareness has increased significantly compared to the past. Now we face a patient group that values oral and dental health more and is ready to cooperate with dentists to keep their teeth in place. This places greater responsibility on dentists and leads to a change in perspective on treatment.

Perspective on Treatment Is Changing

Not only in Turkey, but throughout the world, for a very long time, dentistry was practiced with the idea of extracting decayed or aching teeth for any reason and replacing this deficiency with a prosthesis. The treatments performed with this logic showed us that preserving even a single tooth in the mouth can bring great comfort to the patient's later life. In short, extracting a tooth in dentistry has now become a very difficult decision to make. In particular, the successful treatments of recent years in the field of endodontics and the treatments performed for keeping teeth in the mouth have, not long ago, resulted in extracted teeth serving patients like healthy teeth for years.

The Organ Approach to Teeth Is Important

In our mouth we have 32 teeth together with wisdom teeth. We need to move away from the logic of "what if we extract one." Moreover, these 32 teeth have separate functions in the mouth. Loss of one affects all of them. For this reason, regardless of how many teeth we have, we should fight to keep a tooth that is bothering us in our mouth. The approach should be one of treatment. Many teeth that are said to be extracted today can continue to function for years with good root canal treatment.

Is It True That Teeth That Have Undergone Root Canal Treatment Must Eventually Be Extracted?

This rumor has little to no basis in reality. The success rate of root canal treatment on teeth said to be extracted is around 90 percent today. Consider this: if you have root canal treatment on a tooth said to be extracted, you have a 90 percent chance of keeping it.