Abstract
Endodontics constitutes a principal base of dental therapy and is one of the treatments most frequently conducted in practice. It may nevertheless be a treatment regarded as difficult to control the result because it requires many experiences to master the skills. The present paper comparatively investigated the up- date scientific evidence and the experience of practitioners for Endodontics on the bases of many clinical experiences in which the treatment failed at last even though it was carried out by obeying its fundamental rules.
There are not a few cases in endodontic treatment in which the so-called scientific evidence seems to be discrepant from the feeling of practitioners. It may be attributed to the fact that many of the scientific evidences were not established from the clinical results. There also found some clinical results involving unclear criteria for healing or poor objectivity.
In the present paper, the aspects of healing were examined for the cases 5 years or more after endodontic treatment. The examination was carried out on the strict criterion that the healing should mean the case in which the periodontal tissues were judged to be sound by dental X-ray photograph. The cases judged to have healed was 84.5% for those of pulpectomy, 78.3% for noninfected root canal and 66.9% for infected root canal with periapical lesion. These healing rates were considerably lower than expected. I also sometimes experienced the case of recurrence after once judged as completely healed.
It is essential to consider that the scientific evidence of clinical evaluation should be established from the long-term clinical results. In order to improve the quality of endodontic treatment and protect the teeth of patients, it is earnestly desired that the researches and practitioners will cooperate to construct scientific evidences supported by the clinical results.
