Health and Myths
The connection between a healthy mouth and a healthy body is strong and well recognized. When teeth become infected or painful, endodontic treatment (such as root canal therapy) plays a crucial role in restoring comfort, removing infection, and preserving your natural teeth rather than losing them.
An important part of a dentist’s job is to reassure patients who worry about whether endodontic treatment is safe and to emphasize that the patient’s overall health is always the top priority. For patients who want to dig deeper, the American Association of Endodontists (AAE) website (www.aae.org) is an excellent, trusted resource with comprehensive information on the safety and effectiveness of endodontic care and root canal treatment.
Even with many reliable resources available online, patients sometimes arrive with information that is incomplete, outdated, or simply wrong. One example is the long-disproven “focal infection theory” in endodontics, introduced in the early 1900s. In the 1920s, Dr. Weston A. Price published research suggesting that bacteria left in tiny dentinal tubules after root canal treatment could “leak” out and cause almost any kind of degenerative systemic disease, including arthritis and diseases of the kidneys, heart, nervous system, gastrointestinal system, endocrine system, and others. These claims were made at a time when the true causes of many systemic diseases were not yet understood.
Based on this theory, Dr. Price recommended tooth extraction—the most invasive and traumatic dental procedure—rather than saving teeth with endodontic treatment. This led to a troubling period in dentistry when teeth were removed not only to treat existing systemic disease but also as a preventive measure against potential future illness. Even when they were first published, Dr. Price’s methods were questioned, and by the early 1930s, better-designed research using more modern scientific techniques had thoroughly discredited his conclusions.
In the decades since, a large body of research has directly contradicted Dr. Price’s findings. In 1951, the Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) devoted a special issue to reviewing the scientific literature and, based on the evidence, shifted the standard of care back to endodontic treatment for teeth with non-vital pulp when the tooth could reasonably be saved. JADA’s analysis of Dr. Price’s work highlighted serious scientific flaws, including the lack of proper control groups and the use of unnaturally high doses of bacteria in his experiments.
More recent studies continue to support the safety of dental treatment—including endodontics—in relation to overall systemic health. In 2007, the American Heart Association (AHA) updated its recommendations for preventing infective endocarditis and significantly limited the situations where premedication with antibiotics is needed for dental procedures, specifically removing endodontic treatment from the list of procedures requiring premedication. In April 2012, the AHA also reported that there is no scientific evidence that periodontal disease causes heart disease, noting instead that the two conditions often occur in the same person because they share common risk factors such as smoking, increasing age, and diabetes mellitus.
Taken together, decades of research clearly refute the claims made by proponents of the old “focal infection” theory. There is no valid, scientific evidence showing that teeth treated with root canal therapy cause systemic disease. Despite this, some patients still encounter references to this outdated idea online or in conversations and understandably become worried.
