What is root resorption?
A root resportpion is something that used to be very rare, and I'm seeing it more commonly now. Basically, the cells on the outside or inside of the root that are supposed to maintain it and keep it healthy start to eat away at it. It can come from the inside out or the outside in. The effect or result is similar to a cavity, but a cavity is a bacterial process where bacteria make acid, and the acid dissolves the tooth and makes a cavity, and the bacteria eat into your tooth.
This is a process where the cells that are supposed to be maintaining the root, for some reason, start to eat from the inside out or the outside in. The result is the same, but the location is different. The location is down on the root below where you would typically get a cavity, sometimes even below the bone.
Why does root resorption happen?
We know what's happening, that these cells are doing this. We don't know why or what stimulates it. I just did a recent meta-analysis with Grok and AI and ChatGPT to see if there was any research showing why these might be becoming more common. They didn't have anything. I'm not aware of any studies on it. It's something that's kind of unique in dentistry because we don't know what stimulates it.
How is root resorption different from a cavity?
If a cavity is left untreated, it's going into the tooth. It's just a matter of time. You know what's going to happen there. These root resorptive lesions, sometimes they stop on their own. The other thing that's annoying about it: if you get a big, deep cavity, I can do a root canal and a crown. That doesn't take care of it for root resorptive lesions. They will continue.
How is root resorption treated?
Unfortunately, all we can really do is monitor these until they get bad enough that they're causing a problem and then take the tooth out. Luckily, we're in a day and age where we can replace teeth with dental implants, which is cool.
Is root resorption becoming more common?
It's something that I'm starting to see more in my practice. For perspective, I've been doing this for 20 years. I could count on one hand the number of cases I've seen in the preceding 17 years. In the last one or two years, I've seen at least 50 cases on at least two dozen patients. So there's definitely either—I'm just happening to have patients that have more, in a unique instance—or this is something that is on the rise.
This is something that cats get a lot. There are ideas that maybe, oh, the virus more or less jumped from cats to humans. It's like, oh, maybe COVID or the vaccine or something, but the bottom line is we don't really know why. There haven't been any studies on it. So it's frustrating because we don't know what's causing it or how to fix it. It's not anything you can change, but that is one of the reasons we get routine X-rays, and if I ever see it, I'll let you know.
What happens if you find root resorption on an X-ray?
We just monitor it with dental X-rays until it becomes symptomatic, and then we take the tooth out. Or if you want to take out the tooth before it becomes symptomatic and get an implant sooner, we can. But unlike cavities that will always get worse, this isn't necessarily always the case.
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