Can Root Canals Cause Brain Cancer?

Many times patients searching the internet for factual information on root canals stumble across sites and articles claiming that root canals cause cancer, sometimes quoting the horrifying statistic that 97% of all brain cancer patients had undergone root canals. This claim is entirely false, and based on research that was poorly designed and was debunked long ago by the legitimate scientific community. This research was the work of Dr.Weston Prince, and was performed nearly a century ago, during a time before medicine actually understood the cause of many diseases. There is no valid scientific evidence linking root canal treated teeth with disease elsewhere in the body, including cancer.

Dr. Prince advocated tooth extraction during the 1920s as being superior to its significantly less traumatic alternative, endodontic treatment (root canals). His flawed research resulted in a terrifying era where teeth were extracted for almost any purpose, including to cure things like arthritis and to protect against future illness.

In truth, root canals are a safe and highly effective procedure, and is the least obtrusive way to treat severe infections in teeth. Root canals not only eliminate the bacteria causing the infection, they also prevent reinfection and allow the dentist to save the natural tooth. Tooth extraction, on the other hand, is not only a more traumatic experience but is also known to cause a statistically higher likelihood of bacteria entering the bloodstream because the resulting hole in the mouth has a larger surface area than the small hole left by a root canal. There is also no adequate replacement for a natural tooth, so a good dentist such as Dr. Popp at Marlborough Dental in Calgary’s Northeast Quadrant, will always make the utmost effort to save as much of the natural tooth as possible.

As for the claim that 97% of brain cancer victims has also undergone root canals, it was in fact proven as recently as 2013 in research published in JAMA Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, that patients who had undergone multiple endodontic treatments had a 45% reduced risk of cancer.

To book your root canal call 403.248.2066 and visit marlboroughdentalcentre.com today.