Planning Root Canal Treatment (RCT) Before Starting a New Job

If you have a start date and a tooth that has begun to throb, treat the tooth as the fixed commitment and the calendar as the flexible one. A straightforward root canal is one appointment of roughly 60 to 90 minutes under local anaesthesia, with soreness for a few days afterwards. The protective crown that usually follows needs two further visits. Plan for the sequence, not the single appointment.

That is the short version, and the rest of this piece is the reasoning behind it — because the instinct when a new role is a fortnight away is almost always to postpone, and dental infection is one of the few things that punishes postponement rather than rewarding it.

Why is a toothache the wrong thing to defer around a start date?

Because it does not hold still while you are busy. Pulp infection happens inside a sealed hard tooth, where your immune system cannot easily reach it, which is why the ache does not fade the way a bruise does. Left alone, the infection tracks further into the bone and can produce an abscess — swelling near the gum, pain on biting, the sort of thing that empties a diary without consulting it.

So the risk of waiting is not that you spend your induction week slightly uncomfortable. It is that a problem you could have booked into a Saturday becomes an emergency during your second week, when you have no leave, no established goodwill and no idea yet which colleague covers for you.

How much time does the whole sequence take?

Count appointments rather than days.

• The root canal itself. One visit in straightforward cases, around 60 to 90 minutes. Teeth with several canals, curved canals or an active infection may be split across two appointments so things settle before the canals are sealed. Which of those applies to your tooth is decided after an examination and X-ray, not before.
• The restoration. A filling or a crown rebuilds the tooth. Where a crown is the plan — typical for back teeth — that is usually two more visits: one to prepare the tooth and take an impression or digital scan, one to fit the finished crown once the laboratory has made it. A temporary crown protects the prepared tooth in between.

So a realistic mental model is three to four appointments spread over some weeks, not one afternoon. The interval between crown preparation and fitting depends on the laboratory and on your own diary, and is agreed with you at planning rather than being a fixed number.

Will I be able to work the same day?

Usually, with two caveats the treatment itself creates.

The first is anaesthesia. Your lip, tongue and cheek stay numb for a while after you leave, so avoid chewing on that side until the feeling has fully returned — not because the tooth is fragile at that moment, but because it is genuinely easy to bite your own cheek without noticing. A morning appointment followed by an afternoon of talking to new people is not the pairing to choose if you can avoid it.

The second is tenderness. The tooth and the gum around it commonly feel sore to bite on for a few days afterwards. Over-the-counter pain relief is usually enough. That is compatible with a desk, a laptop and a full inbox; it is less compatible with a two-day offsite where every meal is at a table with people you have just met.

What should I not try to squeeze into the first week?

Two things, for different reasons.

Do not schedule the crown preparation for the day before you start. A temporary crown is cemented lightly on purpose, so that it can be removed cleanly later. That means it can come loose, and if it does you want to be somewhere you can telephone the clinic and be seen, not in an unfamiliar city office wondering whether it matters. It does — a prepared tooth left uncovered is sensitive and vulnerable.

Do not begin a course of treatment you cannot finish. The gap between a root canal and its crown is the part people quietly abandon once life gets busy, and it is the part that protects the whole investment. A root-treated tooth has lost its blood supply and becomes more brittle; a back tooth doing real chewing work can fracture without a crown, and a fractured root often cannot be saved. Booking the root canal is the easy half. Blocking out the restoration appointments before you start the job is the half that matters.

What if the tooth is not actually hurting yet?

Then you have the luxury of proper timing, and the sensible move is to have it looked at while you still have it. A dark spot, something catching your tongue, a twinge from cold water — those are the stage at which decay is often still treatable with a filling, which is a single appointment and removes far less of the tooth. Decay does not pause. The same cavity ignored through a busy quarter is what turns a filling into a root canal and a crown.

If you are between roles, or in your notice period, this is the window. You have predictable hours and nobody counting your absences.

What does the first appointment involve, and what does it cost?

An examination and an X-ray, to confirm whether the pulp is genuinely inflamed or infected and whether a root canal is the right answer at all. Sometimes it is not — that is the point of looking first.

Root canal treatment at The Aesthetic Edge starts from ₹2,999 per tooth, the same at Indiranagar and Bellandur. The crown is a separate restoration and is quoted alongside it once the dentist has seen which tooth and how much sound structure remains. A consultation is ₹500, waived against your treatment.

A workable plan

If your start date is a month out: book the assessment this week, have the root canal done as soon as it is offered, and put the two crown appointments in the diary before you sign anything.

If your start date is next week: still book the assessment this week. It is better to know what you are dealing with — and to have the dentist's number saved — than to discover it during your first performance conversation.

Full detail sits on the root canal treatment page, and the crown side is covered under bridges and crowns. When you are ready to put a date to it, book an appointment at whichever branch is the easier journey from your new office.