Abstract
To investigate the efficacy of photo activated disinfection (PAD) in reducing colony-forming unit (CFU) counts of Enterococcus faecalis (E. faecalis) in infected dental root canals. The study compared the efficacy of PAD with conventional endodontic treatment (CET) and also a combination of CET along with PAD.
53 maxillary incisors were taken for the study. Teeth were divided into 3 groups, CET (Group I) (n=11), PAD (Group II) (n=21), and a combination of CET and PAD (Group III) which consisted of (n=21) samples, Group II and Group III were further divided into 2 subgroups, Group IIa, IIb and Group IIIa, IIIb. Strains of E. faecalis were inoculated in all the root canals. CET group samples were treated by chemo-mechanical preparation (CMP) alone, PAD samples were treated with laser alone at 2 different exposure time (4min and 2min). In the combination treatment, samples were treated initially by CET and then by PAD for a time period of 4min and 2min. Contents of the root canal were aspirated, diluted and plated in Tryptone Soya Broth (TSB) and plates were incubated for 24h to observe the bacterial regrowth.
Showed PAD used along with CMP reduced the bacterial load of E. faecalis by 99.5% at 4min and 98.89% at 2min.
PAD may be an adjunctive procedure to kill residual bacteria in the dental root canal systems after standard endodontic root canal preparation.