An in vitro comparison of root canal length measurements in primary teeth

Abstract EN

Aims: The current study aims at comparing the accuracy of root canal lengths in primary teeth deter¬mined by tactile sense, conventional radiography and electronic apex locator (EAL) Materials and Methods: The study consisted of 30 extracted, single-rooted primary teeth.

A comparison was con¬ducted between the root canal length measurements obtained by tactile sensation ,conventional radiog¬raphy and electronic apex locator (EAL), using the actual root canal length as a standardization to compare the above methods.

Root canal length measurements were completed with size15-K file in actual-standard and measuring methods.

The accuracy of the three systems to determine the root-canal length were evaluated by measuring the distance from the tip of the file to the apex.

Results: Statistical results revealed that the EAL was the most accurate method of measurement with the lowest value of standard deviation (0.88±1.41) when compared with the remaining two methods, followed by the con¬ventional radiography while the tactile sense method can be considered the least accurate one since, a significant difference at p<0.05 was founded between this method (15.80±2.71) from the actual root canal length (16.13±2.32) as well as when compared with the other two methods.

Conclusions: The use of radiographs during pediatric therapy should be considered carefully.

The diagnostic value is of¬ten limited and the exposure of children to X- rays should also be limited.

Results from this study indi¬cated that the sole use of tactile method is generally depreciated because of it's non reliability.

An elec¬tronic apex locator method have been proved to be the technique of choice in determining the root ca¬nal length in primary teeth.

Key words: electronic apex locator(EAL), primary teeth, root canal length.