What is a root canal?

Removing the dead nerve from a tooth, cleaning, disinfecting the root canal and filling and sealing the root canal

A root canal is the space within the root of a tooth .
Part of a naturally occurring space within a tooth, it consists of thepulp chamber  (within the coronal part of the tooth), the main canal(s), and more intricate anatomical branches that may connect the root canals to each other or to the surface of the root.

Root canal is the treatment for the pulp of a tooth which results in the elimination of infection, cleaning, shaping and  subsequently obturation/filling of the root canals (physical hollows within a tooth that are naturally inhabited by blood vessels,nerves etc). This procedure results in the elimination of infection and protection of the tooth from future microbial infection.