Dr. Katie To uses dye and microscope imaging to show the hidden lateral canals inside molars where dead tissue gets trapped. She argues conventional root canals often fail to fully clean these pathways, making her skeptical of the procedure for most patients.
What's actually inside a tooth? And this is why I'm not a proponent of root canal therapy for most people. Here's the molar canal architecture, and this is some very interesting injection of dye, and they did some microscope. You can see these roots curve, but what I want to look at are these lateral canals. The lateral canals— we used to think that teeth roots just were like, like an ice cream cone with a string in it. Pull out the string, fill it up with a fake material. And then you're good to go. And then we learned, oh, all throughout all of these canals, everywhere you see red, there is an opportunity for dead tissue. When the tooth dies, it necroses, which means it rots. And when it rots in between here, there's no way that you can get that material out.
