Clinical and Radiographic Evaluation of Procedural Accidents and Errors during Root Canal Therapy

INTRODUCTION: Root canal therapy (RCT)_like other dental practices_ can be accompanied with some accidents or unpredictable conditions that are called "procedural accidents". Having the knowledge about these accidents and their etiology is essential to have RCT completion and to prevent the repeat of these accidents. This study was designed to evaluate accidents occurring during RCT in patients referred to endodontic department of Shahid Beheshti dental school during 2002. MATERIALS and METHODS: This study was conducted via descriptive method. Data were collected from observation, clinical examination and oral radiographs, and were recorded in questionnaires, 150 cases from the patients referred to endodontic department were selected randomly and different observed RCT errors were analyzed by SPSS software. The Chi-square and Fisher exact tests were used for analysis. RESULTS: The study showed that 101 patients (67.3%) had one type of RCT errors, and remaining (32.7%) were error free. From the errors studied the most prevalent were "void" which was observed in 41 patients (27.3%), and "ledge" in 39 patients (26%) respectively. The prevalence of other accidents were underfilling in 35 patients (23.3%), poor shaping in 30 patients (20%), overfilling in 23 patients (15.3%), transportation in 13 patients (8.7%), zipping in 3 patients (2%), gouging in 1 patients (0.7%), and strip perforation in 1 patients (0.7%), while no case of broken instruments, vertical fracture, furcation and cervical perforation was observed. CONCLUSION: The most prevalent errors were found in instrumentation and obturation steps, therefore more care and attention must be paid to instructor observation and the education of these stages.