Internal Bleaching

One of the causes of tooth discoloration is receiving root canal treatment. For one reason or another a front tooth might undergo such treatment. The tooth after this becomes “dead”. meaning there is no nerve and no blood supply in the core of the tooth. If the tooth required such treatment due to trauma, sometime blood pigmentation makes the discoloration worse.

What can be done?
usually a traumatized toth requires a porcelain crown. However if the tooth structure was not damaged significantly. A porcelain crown might be avoided, and to restore the white color fo the tooth, we can do Internal bleaching.
What does that involve?
– after finishing the root canal. we end up with a space where it was occupied by the nerve, this space is called pulp chamber. we drill about 1-2mm into the root canal from the chamber.
– A bleaching medicament is placed into the chamber and sealed.
– following the manufacturer’s instructions, we leave this medicament within the tooth for a certain period of time. then it might be reapplied.
– when the treatment is finished, the medicament is removed and a definite filling is used to close the access cavity.
so in essence in this procedure, we are whitening the tooth from inside out. So it is called internal bleaching.


sometimes even if the tooth is going to be restored with a porcelain crown, such procedure is advised because if the tooth is too dark, it might affect the resulting shade of the porcelain giving us an undesirable shade.


How good is it?
It is quite effective in bleaching a tooth, however sometimes it might be combined with an external option. The darker the tooth is, then less chance for the treatment to work by itself. But for the most common cases, it is quite effective and no more whitening is required.

Conclusion:

If you had a trauma and your tooth appears darker, the solution might not be as costly as you think. talk to us to see if you can have internal bleaching.