Flare-ups in Primary Teeth Before, During, and After Pulpectomy: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

To determine the pain prevalence and severity of flare-ups associated with before, during, and after pulpectomy procedure in children through systematic review and meta-analysis. Pain associated with root canal is a crucial source of fear for patients (especially child patients) and an important concern of dentists. Pain experienced at pretreatment, during treatment, and posttreatment is foreseen and recalled by child patients. A hand search of relevant journals and defined searching of Medline/PubMed, Cochrane, and EBSCOhost databases identified 2,635 articles reporting flare-ups at different intervals. After further filtering and applying inclusion criteria, three articles were identified for meta-analysis. From three recognized articles in the pretreatment phase, 51.2% of cases reported flare-ups; during treatment, there were 19.8% of cases; and in the posttreatment phase, 100% success rate was seen (i.e., no flares were present). The three included studies were heterogeneous according to I ² and τ ² statistics (p <0.001, I ² = 92.64). Pretreatment pulpectomy-associated flare-ups were high, then dropped significantly to minimal levels in 3 days (during treatment) and continued to drop to lowest levels in 7 days (posttreatment).

Moudgalya MS, Kulkarni P, Tiwari S, et al. Flare-ups in Primary Teeth Before, During, and After Pulpectomy: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Int J Clin Pediatr Dent 2024;17(7):838-841.