A comparative scanning electron microscopy evaluation of smear layer removal with chitosan and MTAD.

Abstract

Irrigation, which serves a variety of purposes including antibacterial action, tissue dissolution, cleaning and chelating, plays a centric role in the final success of root canal treatment. Thus, more and more attention has been put on the improvement and development of various irrigation techniques or systems. The aim of the present study was to compare the efficacy of chitosan and MTAD for the smear layer removal from the root canal through scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Thirty single-canal premolars were instrumented with rotary-files and then, randomly assigned to test groups which were irrigated with chitosan and MTDA, and control group was treated with saline. Thereafter, the efficacy of smear layer removal was evaluated by SEM. Thirty teeth were randomly divided into three groups according to the final irrigants: 0.2% chitosan, MTAD, saline (control group). After the mechanical preparation, the samples were irrigated with saline (control group), 0.2% chitosan and MTDA respectively. Then, the samples were split and the smear layer at the apical, middle, and coronal thirds of each root canal was imaged using SEM. Kruskal-Walli test and Mann-Whitney U test Results: The difference between chitosan and MTDA was statistically significant in the apical regions (p < 0.05), no significant difference was obtained in the coronal and middle regions in these two experiment groups (p > 0.05). The control group exhibited the lowest efficacy in smear layer removal in all regions. Thus, from the result of present study, we may conclude that chitosan was more effective in smear layer removal than MTAD, especially in the apical third.