Hi Charlotte, While you’re waiting for other members to join in with their experiences, I can give you a few details. The Gentle Wave procedure for root canal treatment came out after I retired from career as a dental assistant for 30+years. So I didn’t have personal experience with assisting the dentist with this particular technique. But I am familiar with the process.
This system has been in use for about 10 years and it has made the procedure much less uncomfortable for patients. The tooth is essentially ‘cleaned out’ ultrasonically instead of having to use reamers (little files) that are rotated down into the canals to remove dead nerve material. Each time the little file is twisted and retrieved, a small layer of tooth material comes with it. Think of drilling into a piece of wood and then removing the drill. You see bits of wood coming back out. Obviously, the amount of tooth involved is microscopic compared to that, but it gives you an example.

The Gentle Wave technique doesn’t use reamers. The root’s canals are cleaned with ultrasonic sound waves and a solution that flushes the material out instead of ‘drilling’…thereby saving tooth structure. Usually this can be completed in one visit.
If your dentist is offering this technique, they are using state of the art equipment and I think you’ll find the experience less daunting than the old Johnny Carson jokes about having a root canal treatment. ☺️

Will you please share your experience after you’ve had this done?