Prevalence and technical standard of endodontic treatment in a Swedish population. A longitudinal study

The aims of this thesis were to study longitudinally the tooth mortality, prevalence and technical standard of endodontic treatment as well as the endodontic treatment need in a Swedish population. Furthermore, the prevalences of teeth with crowns and posts were studied as well as the prevalence of apical periodontitis in such teeth, to see if these treatments affected the apical status. Finally, the reasons for and incidence of tooth mortality were investigated to see if the reasons for extractions were correlated to endodontic status, crown or post therapy, respectively. The interobserver variation between the two observers taking part in the investigation was also studied and found to be acceptable. The material consisted of full mouth radiographic surveys from 200 patients examined twice with an interval of 5-7 years. It was found that tooth losses were evenly distributed in the different age-groups and that molars were lost more often than teeth in the frontal region. Furthermore, endodontically treated teeth were lost more often than other teeth and the quality of the root filling affected the risk of tooth losses. Teeth with screw posts were lost more frequently than other teeth, while crowned teeth did not run a higher risk of being lost than teeth without crowns. Caries, including pulpitis and apical periodontitis, was the main reason for tooth extractions. There was a great need for endodontic treatment in the population examined, and the technical standard of the root fillings was poor. A slight improvement in quality of endodontic treatment was evident at the second examination. However, the technical standard was still poor. It is concluded that it is important that dentists in general practice should be better trained in performing endodontic treatment, and that research efforts should be made to find better and simpler methods for endodontic treatment.