Pulpitis – symptoms and treatment

Almost everyone knows that a tooth is not just a piece of hard tissue. But that is where most knowledge ends. About the same number of nerves, connective tissues, blood vessels, hiding behind smooth tooth enamel, is known mainly only to specialists who are involved in the diagnosis and treatment of symptoms of pulpitis and many other dental diseases.

What is pulpitis and why does it start?

Every tooth has a pulp. This is the neurovascular bundle. When it becomes inflamed, pulpitis is diagnosed. Today, this disease is considered one of the most common complications of caries. Strictly speaking, the carious lesion is the main cause of the development of an abscess. Moreover, the pulp can become inflamed even when a decent layer of dentin separates it from caries.

Pulpitis differs from the signs and symptoms of other diseases in that the inflammatory process takes place in a confined space. The following reasons may lead to this:

• poor-quality cleaning of the carious cavity from the affected tissues;
• thermal burn of the pulp;
• treatment of deep caries;
• drying of the bottom of the tooth cavity;
• chronic periodontitis;
• unprofessional crown placement.

Symptoms of pulpitis of the wisdom tooth and other teeth

There are two main types of the disease – acute and chronic. They, in turn, are divided into several subspecies.

Acute pulpitis happens:

• focal (there is a focal lesion);
• diffuse (characterized by total damage to the pulp).

There are a little more varieties of the chronic form of the disease:

• fibrous;
• gangrenous;
• hypertrophic.

Depending on the type of the disease, its symptoms also differ slightly:

1. The main symptom of acute focal or diffuse pulpitis is pain resulting from contact with an irritant. A characteristic feature is that discomfort after removal of the stimulus persists for a long time. Sometimes pain is felt in the temples, ears, neighboring teeth.
2. In acute and residual pulpitis, there are no symptoms as such. If unpleasant sensations appear, they are barely noticeable.
3. Hypertrophic inflammation is characterized by the formation of a hypertrophied fibrous polyp in the carious cavity. In addition, tartar and plaque are more actively formed on the teeth on the affected side.
4. Pain is also considered a symptom of gangrenous pulpitis. And it appears not only upon contact with an irritant, but also spontaneously. Very often, the disease causes bad breath. The reason for this is the death of the pulp.

Treatment of symptoms of pulpitis of the tooth

Conservative therapy allows you to save the vital activity of the neurovascular bundle. It is very similar to the treatment of caries. The affected cavity is treated with antiseptics, antibiotics and special proteolytic enzymes. This method is best for young people.

A more complex method of treating pulpitis is surgical. Its main essence is the removal of inflamed pulp particles by the vital or devital method. The latter involves preliminary necrotization of the nerve. The vital method consists in the removal of the neurovascular bundle under general or local anesthesia. At the second stage of such therapy, the root canal of the tooth is closed with a filling material.

In fact, all this can be avoided by simply observing oral hygiene, regularly undergoing examinations at the dentist, curing all diseases in time. Pulpitis is one of those ailments that are much easier to prevent.