Root canal or dental implant?

Root canals and dental implants are equally successful, but implants may need more follow-up maintenance, a new study shows. Dental implants replace tooth roots. A root canal is a procedure designed to save an infected or decayed tooth. The study comes from researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. James Porter Hannahan, DMD, and Paul Duncan Eleazer, DDS, followed 129 dental implants and 143 root canals for three years, on average. Dental implants and root canals had similar success rates, meaning that the teeth in question were still in the mouth and hadn't rotated or needed further correction. Those success rates were 98 percent to 99 percent. "There appears to be little difference in the success of the two treatments," except that "implants required additional procedures more frequently" than teeth that got root canals, Hannahan and Eleazer told.