Comparative analysis of the success rate of direct and indirect pulp capping procedures - A retrospective analysis

Abstract

Treatment options of pulp exposure involve either extraction or root canal therapy, as latter involves multiple appointments and considerable expense. An alternate procedure is pulp capping, which is divided into two types- direct, indirect pulp capping. The aim of this study was to assess and compare the success rate of direct and indirect pulp capping procedures based on postoperative pain and patient's visit after pulp capping procedure. As it was a retrospective analysis, data collected from hospital, Chennai, and it consisted of a total of 439 cases evaluated based on the type of pulp capping done. Inclusion criteria consisted of Patients aged 18 – 50 years who received direct, indirect pulp capping procedures. Patients who received deep caries management. Patients who have obvious carious lesions noted clinically, radio graphically and received either complete/ partial caries removal followed by placement of cavity liner. The collected data was imported to excel sheet, analyzed using SPSS software. In this study of 261 patients (99 are females, 162 are males with a mean age of 18-40) were included. It was observed that there was not a significant difference among the groups. Indirect pulp capping has a higher success rate over Direct pulp capping with a p-value greater than 0.05. Within the limitations of this study, it can be concluded that the indirect pulp capping has a higher success rate over the direct pulp capping procedures, although it's not statistically significant.