Dr. Steven Raphael grew up in Springfield,a few short minutes from the 417 Endodontics office. After graduating from Kickapoo High School in 1996, Steven earned a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford in 2000, a D.D.S. from the University of Missouri at Kansas City in 2007, and an Endodontic Specialty Certificate from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011. In 2012, Steven returned to Springfield to join 417 Endodontics and is looking forward to many years of providing quality dental care to the Ozarks.

Steven is a member of the American Dental Association, the American Association of Endodontists, the Missouri Dental Society, the Greater Springfield Dental Society, the Illinois Dental Society, the Greater Chicago Dental Society, and the Edgar D. Coolidge Endodontic Study Club. In his spare time, Steven enjoys spending time with his wife and daughters, listening to and playing music, traveling, playing sports, participating in physical fitness, and watching movies, concerts, and theater.

No onewantsto go to the dentist. We get that. But we're here to make your experience as stress-free and positive as possible, and remember: When we're all done, you'll leave our office feeling a million times better.

Once your regular dentist has referred you to our office, we'll go about figuring out what's wrong with you and whether endodontic treatment is actually the answer. We'll review your medical and dental history, perform diagnostic tests, take some x-rays, and figure out the best course of action to get you all fixed up.

Sometimes, the pain you 're feeling can actually be coming from a different area than you might think -- a weird phenomenon known as 'referred pain.' We 'll look for that, too, to make sure we 're going after the correct source of your discomfort.

Pain that seems like it might need a root canal can also be related to a host of other issues -- anything from a sinus infection to a blocked salivary gland. If we see that something like that is going on, we'll refer you to the proper medical professional for the problem, since a root canal wouldn't help.

Okay -- let's start with a quick lesson on teeth. From the outside, our teeth look hard and solid, right? But inside every tooth, beneath that shiny enamel and a hard layer called the dentin, is a soft tissue called the pulp. It's made up of blood vessels, nerves, and connective tissue.

You need a root canal when the pulp becomes inflamed or infected. That can happen because of deep decay or fillings, a crack or chip in the tooth, or some sort of trauma. If any of those things are left untreated, they can cause serious pain or swelling -- even a not-so-fun build-up of pus and debris.

That's where we come in. During a root canal, our endodontists use a series of super-small instruments along with special medicines to remove the infected pulp. They then carefully clean and reshape the inside of the tooth's root. Last but not least, they fill and seal up the space with a rubbery filling known as gutta percha.

Once all that's finished, you'll go back to your regular dentist, who will put a crown on the tooth to protect it and get it back in business for you. After that, the tooth should work and feel fine -- just like any other pearly white in your beautiful mouth.(On occasion, we'llhave to retreat a root canal later on -- if there are new fractures, for instance, or infections that come up in the tooth after your initial visit -- but that's more the exception than the rule.)

Some of the tools we'll use for a root canal include a dental operating microscope, which lets us zoom way in to see the inside of your tooth and look for fractures orextra canals,andan electronic apex locator, which helps us make sure we treat the entire canal from top to bottom.

Most of the time, the regular root canal procedure described above is all we need to do. Every now and then, though, a tooth can become infected months or even years after a successful treatment. In those cases, endodontic surgery may be able to save the tooth.

It sounds a little icky, but it works: What we do is open up the gum tissue near the tooth to get at the underlying bone and take away theinfected tissue. We also take out the very end of the tooth's root while we're there, then put in a small filling and/or a few stitches to help seal everything up and make sure it heals properly. In the months after that's done, the bone heals around the end of the root -- and in most cases, the tooth is then healthy and fine from there on out.

Other procedures we'll sometimes do include vital pulp therapy, in which we remove unhealthy tissue in a tooth that isn't fully developedand thus allow the body to keep developing a healthy root on its own; pulpal regeneration, in which we stimulate an undeveloped tooth to make it start growing again (yes, effectively bringing it back from the dead -- but don't worry: It won't become a zombie!); and trauma management, in which we'll work with teeth that have been damaged -- splinting loose teeth orreplanting teeth that have become detached, for instance-- to get your mouth feeling happy and healthy again.