Clinical studies on ferric sulphate as a pulpotomy medicament in primary teeth

The purpose of this paper is to review three prospective and two retrospective studies that have been published on the use of ferric sulphate as a pulpotomy medicament and, also, present the results of a recently completed, 3 year comparative study in pulpotomized primary teeth using ferric sulphate and diluted formocresol. The most important finding from the reviewed studies was that ferric sulphate gives very good clinical and radiographic results with high tooth survival rates and with no statistically significant differences from that of formocresol. Internal resorption is a common radiographic finding in both ferric sulphate and formocresol treatments with no statistically significant differences between them. However, internal resorption differs in size and progression rate among teeth. There were cases reported in which the size of the internal resorption was very small and unchanged over time, and even cases where the area of the resorption was self-repaired with hard tissue. Some of the authors considered only teeth with progressing and/or extensive internal resorption as failures, while small size and unchanged with time internal resorption was not considered as failure.

Based on the data of the reviewed studies it is suggested that ferric sulphate be used, rather than formocresol, for pulpotomies of primary teeth as the latter has been blamed for systemic and local side effects on the developing successors.