Morphometrical analysis of main and accessory canals in apical root portion of frontal teeth

Reviewing radiographs may often lead to a wrong conclusion regarding root canal ending (apical constriction) and anatomical apex of the tooth root. Anthropological measurements may help clinicians to understand better root canal ending aberrations in a sense to decide whether to do a revision of the root canal filling or not. The object of this investigation was to examine the deviation frequency, the distance of the major apical foramen from the anatomical apex and occurrence and number of accessory canals in the apical third of the frontal teeth roots. A total of 156 randomly chosen upper and lower permanent incisors and canines, after extraction due to periodontal disease were prepared for the investigation. The access cavity was prepared and root canal therapy was initiated just to prepare endodontic space for methylene blue dye injection. Methylene blue clearly dyed all root canal exits and after that the teeth were cut and examined with a stereomicroscope and a sliding scale. Results indicate that deviation frequency was found in 60.25% of the cases and the mean distance between deviated major foramen and the anatomical root apex was 0.35 mm. Accessory canals were found in 33.33% of the cases in the apex third of the root. Data were statistically elaborated with the method of Chi-square test.