ASSESSMENT OF PERIAPICAL PERIODONTITIS IN ROOT CANAL TREATMENT FAILURE PATIENTS RELATED TO THE LENGTH OF ROOT CANAL FILLING

Abstract

Apical periodontitis is an acute or chronic inflammatory lesion affecting the periapical tissues of teeth caused by bacterial contamination of the root canal system. The purpose of the study was to determine the frequency of periapical periodontitis in root canal treatment failure related to the length of obturation.

A total of 100 patients were selected. Periapical radiographic survey was done for all the endodontically treated teeth. The distance between the root filling and the radiographic apex was measured using categories of overfilling which is radiopaque material beyond the radiographic apex and underfilled was defined as radiopaque material > 2 mm away from the radiographic apex, then for each category number of male and female were determined, divided into different age categories. The statistical analysis was run in the computer program, SPSS version 17. Mann Whitney U and chi square test were the statistical tests used.

The average age of study patients was 36.7 ± 8.5 years and 58 (58.0%) were females. The majority of the patients 59 (59.0%) had overfilled root canal filling while 41 (41.0%) had under filled root canal. Statistically insignificant difference was not4ed when different age groups and gender were compared to the root canal filling status ( P- value >0.05)

Apical periodontitis is significantly related to inadequate root canal filling that is mostly due to overfilling of root canal rather than that under filled.