Endodontist (Board Certified) - Joseph S Dovgan DDS MS PC - Serving Paradise Valley, Scottsdale, & Phoenix Arizona providing endodontic services such as diagnosis, root canals or endodontic therapy, retreatment, and endodontic surgery

Our team is committed to excellence and your dental health is our primary concern. Our goal is to make your time in our office as comfortable and pleasant as possible. Our mission is to provide the best endodontic care. We take pride in our state-of-the-art facility. All of the equipment and materials used in our office are of the highest quality. We try to treat our patients just like we would want to be treated ourselves! We will provide a thorough diagnosis, explain different treatment options to you, and the likelihood of success for each, with the hope of providing you with enough information to enable you to make an informed choice. We look forward to serving you and welcome you to our office. Feel free to call us or e-mail us about setting up an appointment.

Endodontists are dentists who specialize in maintaining teeth through endodontic therapy -- procedures, involving the soft inner tissue of the teeth, called the pulp. The word "endodontic" comes from "endo" meaning inside and "odont" meaning tooth. Like many medical terms, it's Greek. All dentists are trained in diagnosis and endodontic therapy, however, some teeth can be especially difficult to diagnose and treat. That’s why you may have been referred to an endodontic specialist. In addition to dental school, endodontists receive two or more years of advanced education in this kind of treatment. They study root canal techniques and procedures in greater depth, for diagnosis and treatment of more difficult cases. For this reason, many dentists choose to refer their patients to endodontists.

		Root canal, or Nonsurgical Endodontic Therapy. This procedure is performed to save a tooth when the inner tissue, called the pulp, becomes damaged. Therapy consists of opening the tooth, removing the pulp, cleaning, shaping, and filling to seal the root canals. Endodontic therapy is usually highly successful (up to 90% of the time)! Retreatment. Occasionally a tooth that has undergone endodontic, treatment fails to heal or pain continues despite therapy. Although rare, sometimes a tooth initially responds to root canal therapy but becomes painful or diseased months or years later. When either of these situations occur, the tooth often can be maintained with a second endodontic treatment.

		Performs Endodontic Surgery. Sometimes nonsurgical endodontic therapy is ineffective. The endodontist may then use an in-office surgical procedure called root end resection and root end filling to remove the root tip and seal the root canals with a filling in the end of the root.

		Treats Traumatic Injuries. Pulp damage is sometimes caused by a blow to the mouth, and the endodontist specializes in treating these traumatic injuries. For example, a blow to a child's permanent tooth that is not fully developed can cause the root to stop growing. A procedure called apexification stimulates bone to be deposited at the end of the root which makes it possible to then save the tooth through a root canal procedure. An endodontist is specially trained in procedures for replanting teeth that have been knocked out of their sockets.

		Diagnoses and Treats Pain. Oral pain such as toothaches or cracked / fractured teeth can often be difficult to pinpoint. Because of the vast network of nerves in the mouth, the pain of a damaged or diseased tooth often is felt in another tooth and/or in the head, neck, or ear. An endodontist is a specialist in diagnosing and treating this type of pain.