Claim: The No. 1 cause of heart attack is a tooth treated for a root canal.
ESTIMATE ANS: False. There is no reliable scientific evidence that having a root canal can cause a heart attack, according to endodontists. Cardiologists confirm this alsoexplaining that heart attacks are most often caused by coronary artery disease, which can result from poor cholesterol control, blood pressure, obesity and other risk factors.
THE FACTS: Social media posts claiming a causal link between root canal treatments and heart attacks perpetuate a century-old myth that both cardiologists and dentists say is false.
The claims, which got thousands of Facebook likes this week, were made in a video with a narrator saying “the No. 1 cause of a heart attack is a root canal treated tooth, plain and simple, no correlation, no link, cause and effect.”
The video references a 2019 documentary called “Root Cause,” which argues that root causes are linked to many medical issues.
But “there is no scientific evidence to suggest that root canals are linked to heart attacks or other diseases such as cancer,” according to Dr. Michael Reddy, dean of the University of California School of Dentistry, San Francisco.
Dr. Stefan Zweig, president of the American Association of Endodontists, agreed, saying:There is no reliable evidence that root canal treatment can cause a heart attack. There is absolutely no truth to that statement.”
The false claim comes from research from the 1920s that “has since been disproved through controlled research studies,” Reddy said.
One researcher at the time believed that bacteria stuck to dental tubules during root canal treatment could “leak out,” causing disease elsewhere in the body, according to the American Association of Endodontists. As a result, he advocated removing infected teeth, rather than repairing and preserving them with a root canal procedure.
However, his research techniques were quickly criticized and refuted by better-designed studies in the 1930s, according to the AAE. The Journal of the American Dental Association later revised and further discredited research of the 1920s.
Root canal treatments – which involve removing inflamed or infected tissue from inside the tooth, cleaning the space and filling it to prevent bacteria from re-entering – help rid the mouth of an infection. They don’t cause infection, Reddy said.
These procedures are safe while allowing the patient to keep their tooth, Zweig said.
“There are approximately 20 million root canals performed in the United States each year,” he said. “And while there is some evidence that poor oral health in general can affect a person’s overall health, there is insufficient evidence to support that root canals cause any other health problem.”
Cardiologists have confirmed that there is no link between root canal treatments and heart attacks.
“This is a myth, this is a legend,” said Dr. Matthew Martinez, director of sports cardiology at Atlantic Health System at Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey.
Instead, he said, heart attacks result from a blockage in a coronary artery.
Coronary heart disease most often causes such a blockage. This often results from inadequate control of risk factors such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle, he said.
The documentary “Root Cause” referenced in the post was publicly criticized in 2019 by The American Association of Endodontists, the American Dental Association and the American Association for Dental Research wrote to Netflix that its central claim “has been refuted by decades of peer-reviewed scientific evidence.”
The streaming platform later removed the film from its library.
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This is part of the AP’s effort to combat widespread misinformation, including working with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content circulating online. Learn more about data control in AP.
