Pulp Revascularization and Regeneration: Differences, Utilization, and Outcome

Abstract

Microbial, mechanical, physical, and chemical factors are strong enough to endanger tooth pulp, resulting in alterations and inflammation of its vasculature, and causing intolerable pain. Clinical and technical management of diseases of these tissues is oftentimes very difficult due to the vastly varied anatomical nature of the pulpal space. Root canal treatment has been used to scavenge the diseased pulp and allow healing of the supporting tissues. In a small proportion of teeth, the creation of the apical root structure Hertwig’s Epithelial Root Sheath may not be completed (causing an open apex) because of trauma or breach of the pulp by caries. In these scenarios, alternative techniques have been found, which regenerate a functional pulp tissue optimally. Regenerative endodontic procedures are biologically based techniques devised for predictable replacement of injured, infected, or missing structures with live viable tissues that restore the normal physiologic functions of the pulpdentine complex. Pulp revascularization is generally described as re-introduction of vascularity in the root canal system. Pulp regeneration, on the contrary, has not been accurately defined. Even though blood vessels are necessary components of dental pulp, pulpal regeneration is regarded incomplete without an odontoblastic layer bordering the dentin-pulp interface. Although the interactions with human pulp derived stem cells are still vague, it is suspected that conventional pulpal cells that resist infection can grow rapidly under the impact of Hertwig’s epithelial root sheath even during the inflammation stage; generating odontoblasts which has the ability to give rise to a tubular dentin, triggering apexogenesis. It is understood that similar and consistent outcomes in the endodontics are not always achieved. The pace of apex maturogenesis differs due to distinctive conditions of each case. A possibility of chronic necrosis my strip the pulpal tissue of remnants of viable cells and may lead to reduced capabilities to regenerate.