Most cases that I see, Dr Gerald has seen as well because in our clinic we do a multi-disciplinary approach. Dr Gerald is very strong in surgery but some patients like the little girl who’s just 10 years old -- we’re not going to put dental implants in her. But for some patients with trauma, a lot of them tend to end up with root canal complications.
For adult patients, usually, the nerve is not going to heal itself, so we have to do the conventional root canal treatment. For children, there’s a greater chance that you can have a recovery of the nerve, which is important for the growth and development of the root. Because if the root is very thin, then in future even if all the teeth are there you may end up with a root fracture.
So for that case what we actually tried to do was to allow the root to heal in a process called a pulpotomy. We removed part of the root canal tissues, you don’t remove all like you would in a root canal. That’s something quite interesting. So far it’s healing well but in these cases, you need long-term follow-up. Long-term meaning years, forever basically.
