Most root canals are finished in one sixty to ninety minute appointment — but an actively discharging abscess is a case where we deliberately take two visits.
A straightforward root canal is completed in one appointment of sixty to ninety minutes, and single-visit treatment performs comparably to multi-visit treatment when the canal can be cleaned, shaped and dried properly within that session. Rotary instrumentation and electronic apex locators removed most of the reason the procedure used to be split across several weeks. For a patient who has flown in for a five-day trip, this is what makes the treatment realistic at all.
Some teeth should not be sealed on the first day. An abscess that is actively discharging, a canal that will not stop weeping, severe pre-operative pain with swelling, or the retreatment of a previously failed root canal all get an interim calcium hydroxide dressing and a temporary seal for one to two weeks. The purpose is to reduce the bacterial load before the permanent filling goes in. Insisting on one visit in those cases trades a convenient schedule for a lower success rate.
Root canal treatment is €120 per tooth. Plan the tooth to be treated at the start of your visit rather than at the end, because the crown that follows needs preparation, a scan and milling, and we would rather complete all of it in the same trip than send you home on a temporary filling. A molar with three or four canals takes noticeably longer in the chair than a single-canal incisor but is priced the same.
A first-time root canal on a tooth with reasonable remaining structure is a very reliable treatment. Retreatment of a failed one is less so, and a tooth that has lost most of its crown, has a vertical root fracture, or has decay reaching below bone level is often better extracted and replaced with an implant from €299. We give that opinion before you commit, not after two appointments have already been spent on it.
The treatment itself is done under local anaesthesia and feels like a long filling appointment. Discomfort for two or three days afterwards, especially when biting on that tooth, is normal and responds to standard painkillers.
Usually yes. We prepare, scan and mill crowns in the same building, so a root canal done at the start of a five to seven day visit can be finished with a permanent zirconium crown from €180 before you fly home.