JouRNAL OF ENDODONTICS Copyright 1999 by The American Association of Endodontists

Printed in U.S.A. VOL. 25, No. 5, MAY 1999

Endodontic Treatment of Teeth with Apical Periodontitis: Single vs. Multivisit Treatment
Martin Trope, DMD, E. Olutayo Delano, BDS, MS, and Dag rstavik, DDS, PhD

This study was performed to evaluate radiographic healing of teeth with apical periodontitis, treated in one visit or in two visits (a) with or (b) without calcium hydroxide as an intracanal disinfecting medicament. The patients were assigned one of the three treatment groups by the throwing of a die. The Periapical Index (PAl) Scoring Method was used to compare differences in periapical status from the beginning of treatment to a 52-wk follow-up evaluation. Overall, the periapical status of the treated teeth improved significantly after 52 wk (p < 0.0001). A PAl score of 1 or 2 was considered as representing a "good" periapical status while 3, 4, or 5 was a "bad" status. When base line PAl scores were controlled for, the calcium hydroxide group showed the most improvement in PAl score (3, 4, or 5 to 1 or 2), followed by the one-step group (74% vs. 64%). The teeth that were left empty between visits had clearly inferior healing results. Power statistics were conducted to determine the numbers required for significant differences between the groups, and it was shown that large experimental groups on the order of hundreds of patients would be required to show significant differences.

NaOC1 provides disinfection in some 40 to 60% of the teeth thus treated (7). The subsequent application of a calcium hydroxide dressing brings the percentage of bacteria-negative teeth to 90 to 100% (8); this treatment regimen is thus the current standard for root canal disinfection. One issue frequently debated in recent years is whether conscientious cleaning by instrumention and irrigation may reduce the need for a dressing and effect satisfactory disinfection of the canal system (9, 10). Such single-visit treatment would, if successful, be time-saving and reduce the risk of interappointment infection. Many practitioners experience high success rates with this technique, based on patient acceptance, lack of significant flare-ups, and practice management considerations. However, whereas a favorable flare-up rate for one-step treatment is documented (11, 12), a well-designed, prospective follow-up study has not been performed on the long-term success of this technique, compared with controlled disinfection with calcium hydroxide, followed by obturation. Recently, efforts have been made to improve on the diagnostic techniques used to detect differences in response to treatment and treatment variables. An unbiased index scoring system (13) may afford improvements in the scientific aspect of radiographic interpretation in a large series of cases. Therefore, we felt that a controlled prospective study to evaluate treatment outcomes with these two treatment methods might be possible. The purpose of this study was to evaluate radiographic healing of teeth with apical periodontitis treated in (a) one visit or (b) two visits, either without or with the addition of calcium hydroxide as an intracanal disinfecting medicament.

Apical periodontitis is caused, primarily, by bacteria in the root canal space (1, 2). Therefore, a logical treatment aim is to remove as many of these bacteria as possible. If bacteria are removed to levels that are undetectable by bacteriological methods in use today, an extremely high success rate in the resolution of apical periodontitis can be expected (3, 4). The scientifically documented procedure for the best results in canal disinfection is based on complete debridement and irrigation of the root canal during the first appointment, followed by the application of a calcium hydroxide dressing for 1 wk or more. Root filling is then performed at the second or a later appointment (5). Mechanical instrumentation alone causes a 100- to a 1000-fold reduction in numbers of bacteria (6), but complete elimination in only 20 to 43% of cases. Added antibacterial irrigation with 0.5%
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MATERIALS AND METHODS Patient Selection The primary criterion for inclusion of subjects in the study was the presence of radiographically demonstrable apical periodontitis on a single-rooted tooth or on one root with a single canal in one root of a multirooted tooth. Patients were excluded from the study if, (a) they had a diagnosis of diabetes, (b) they had a diagnosis of HIV infection or other immunocompromising disease, (c) they were < 16 or >80 years old, or (d) the apical two-thirds of the root canal in question had been entered and instrumented or dressed before the inclusion stage.

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Randomization
After initial screening and registrations, the patients were assigned to a treatment group (1 of 3 treatment groups) by the throwing of a die. This ensured that each patient stood an equal chance of being treated with any method.

Consent
The project was approved by the Committee on Investigations Involving Human Subjects at the University of North Carolina, School of Dentistry. All patients read and signed a consent form before initiation of the treatment.

Treatment
All patients were treated by one author (D.O.) according to a standardized regimen, including elements of access, rubber dam, and establishment of asepsis. Instrumentation was also standardized with 2.5% NaOC1 used as the irrigant. All teeth were obturated with lateral condensation of gutta-percha and Roth 801 sealer (Roth Drug Co., Chicago, IL). FIG 1. Impression of position of the radiographic mount. This enables follow-up radiographs to be taken at identical angles.

Treatment Groups
GROUP1

Experimental Group (0): Treatment was completed in one

appointment. GROUP 2

FIG 2. Reference radiographs, corresponding line drawings, and their associated PAl scores. (Reproduced with permission from the Swedish Dental Journal [1967].)

Control Group (E): Instrumentation was completed at the first appointment. The canal was left empty, but closed for approximately 1 wk before the second appointment. On the second appointment, the treatment was completed.
GROUP 3

Conventional Group (C): Instrumentation was completed at the first appointment. A dressing of calcium hydroxide was placed to remain for at least 1 wk. Treatment was completed at the second appointment.
Radiographic Technique
All patients in the study had a standardized X-ray series. Pre-op, immediate post-op, and control radiographs were taken with individual bite-blocks attached to the beam-guiding device (XCP, Rinn Corp, Elgin, IL). The bite blocks were constructed in bite registration impression material (Polyvinylsiloxane, Kerr, Romulus, MI) and kept between appointments (Fig. 1). The essential radiographs in the series were all processed under similar conditions in the automatic X-ray processor.

interpretation designed to determine the absence, presence, or transformation of a disease state. The reference is made up of a set of five radiographs with corresponding line drawings and their associated score on a photographic print (Fig. 2). These scores are based on a correlation with inflammatory periapical status confirmed by histology (13). The 9 observers that participated in the study were made up of 4 graduate oral and maxillofacial radiology residents, 2 graduate endodontic residents, 1 oral epidemiologist, 1 general dentist, and 1 experienced endodontist. All were blinded to the u'eatment groups and aims of the study.

Observer Calibration
Calibration was conducted by twice scoring a set of 100 cases on individual radiographs. The "true score" was by consensus of two dentists involved with the formulation of the system. The following specific written instructions were given to the observers: 1. Find the reference radiograph where the periapical area most closely resembles the periapical area you are studying. Assign the corresponding score to the observed root. 2. When in doubt, assign a higher score. 3. For multirooted teeth, use the highest of the scores given to the individual roots. 4. All teeth must be given a score. 2 magnification was provided for optional use. Following the first observation session, agreement with reference "true score" was assessed with kappa statistics. One of the

Radiographic Evaluation
Radiographic evaluation was done using the Periapical Index (PAI) Scoring System (13). This is a 5-point scale radiographic

Vol. 25, No. 5, May 1999 TABLE 1. Weighted kappa for observers before (A) and after (B) calibration with reference true PAl scores
Observers 0-OR 1 -OR 2-OR 3-ER 4-ER 5-GD 6-OR 7-OE 8-EE A 0.56 0.57 0.61 0.44 0.59 0.38 0.55 0.42 0.51 B 0.64 0.59 0.66 0.50 0.67 0.64 0.60 0.53 0.53

Endodontic Treatment of Apical Periodontitis

347

Radiographs from 81 patients with 102 cases (Table 2) were scored with the PAI. Sixty-one patients had single cases, 18 had 2 cases, and 2 patients had 3 cases. The patients were made up of 54 females and 27 males having a mean age of 44.6 years, with a range of 19 to 79. These cases were present on 514 radiographs, and a total of 556 scores were generated. Eight patients had 2 lesions each on 1 radiograph, and 1 patient had 2 lesions each on separate radiographs.

Observer Variation and True Scores

The scores from observers 6 and 8 were eliminated before the determination of the "true score." The weighted kappa (Table 3) for observers 2, 4, and 7 did not change, whereas the others did slightly. Total agreement using the threshold for model scores improved from 70% for the "silver standard" scores to 76% for the "true score." Interobserver correlation with a mixed model regression analysis shows an improvement from 0.59 to 0.64 (Table 4) with the elimination of two observers.

OR, oral radiology resident; ER, endodontic resident; EE, experienced endodontist; OE, oral epiderniologist; GD, general dentist.

authors (E.O.D.) had a brief conference with each of the observers on all cases that had a difference of more than one from the "true score" and on other randomly selected missed cases. A second session observation was done at a time not less than 3 days after the conference. Agreement with the reference was again evaluated to determine the effectiveness of the calibration exercise. The observation session of the study radiographs then followed.

True Scores
A silver standard of "true score" was obtained by taking the model score corresponding to agreement by five or more observers or using the mean when fewer than five were in agreement. The averaged scores were rounded off to a whole unit. The "true score" was obtained by a similar approach for a subset of scores from seven observers after eliminating the two with the lowest correlation to the silver standard. The threshold was agreement between four observers.

Endodontic Treatment Results

Figure 3 shows the mean PAI scores for all treated teeth over the 52-wk observation period. Longitudinal A N O V A of PAl with reference to base line was significant (p < 0.001), with effective difference starting at week 12. No significant interaction between time and treatment was demonstrated. For the PAI outcome, the M U L T I L O G procedure was used to compare the three treatments while controlling for the correlation structure of the data. A replacement design was used with the patient as the primary sampling unit. The models examined predicted PAI at week 52 by base line PAl (all five levels) and treatment received. We looked at PAl at week 52 as a dichotomy of good versus bad, where good was PAI score of 1 or 2 and bad was a PAI score of 3, 4, or 5. Table 5 gives the distribution of PAl scores at base line using the same good versus bad dichotomy. At base line treatment O (one-visit teeth) began with 42% of the teeth having a good PAI score, whereas treatment C (2 visits with calcium hydroxide) had just 23% of the teeth with a good PAl score. This difference in "starting points" had to be controlled for when interpreting the healing results at week 52. At week 52 (Table 6), overall 73.5% of the teeth (75/102) ended the study with a good PAI score, whereas 26.5% of the teeth (27/102) did not. Table 6 shows how the individual treatments performed. (These do not account for base line differences seen in Table 5.) The results of treatment E (2 visits, no calcium hydroxide) were clearly inferior to the other treatment methods. For this reason, and because this group was included primarily for purposes of bacteriology, all further analysis was to compare groups C and O only. The fact that overall treatments C and O ended the study with similar proportions of good responses, but started with different base line PAl scores, emphasizes the importance of controlling for baseline in the modeling process.

INTRAEXAMINER RELIABILITY A repeat observation was conducted after more than 6 wk. The sample consisted of every fourth case from the original study pool until a total of 100 cases had been read by each observer.

NUMBERS AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS The conventional procedure should produce a success rate of - 8 0 % . Computations of necessary sample sizes for comparisons among treatments indicate that sample sizes of 55 per group would be sufficient to detect differences in rates of 5% or more, with a power o f p = 0.20 (14). In this study, 102 teeth (C = 31, E = 26, O = 45) presented for the 52-wk follow-up examination. Because these numbers were unlikely to be large enough for statistical differences between the groups, a power analysis evaluation (see Results) was performed.

RESULTS Radiographic Method

CALIBRATION The observers' competence at using the PAl all improved with calibration (Table 1).

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Trope et al. TABLE 2. Distribution of teeth and longitudinal radiographs scored with the PAl
Tooth Maxillary incisor Maxillary canine Maxillary premolar Maxillary molar Mandibular incisor Mandibular canine Mandibular premolar Mandibular molar Cases 33 32% 4 4% 15 14% 9 9% 2 2% 2 2% 19 18% 19 18% 103 100% 0 33 32% 4 4% 15 14% 8 9% 2 2% 2 2% 19 18% 19 18% 102 100% 1 32 32% 3 3% 15 15% 9 9% 2 2% 2 2% 17 17% 19 19% 99 100% 4 30 31% 4 4% 13 14% 9 9% 2 2% 2 2% 17 18% 19 20% 96 100% 12 26 20% 3 3% 12 14% 7 8% 2 2% 2 2% 16 18% 20 23% 88 100% 24 25 30% 3 4% 12 14% 7 8% 2 2% 2 2% 15 18% 19 22% 85 100%

Journal of Endodontics

52 28 33% 3 4% 13 15% 6 7% 2 2% 2 2% 15 17% 17 20% 86 100%

Total 174 31% 20 4% 80 14% 46 8% 12 2% 12 2% 99 18% 113 20% 556 100%

Total

TABLE 3. Weighted kappa for observers against "silver standard" (A) and "true score" (B) and intraobserver (C)
4 8
I

Time in weeks 12 16
I

20

24
I

28
I

32

36
]

40
I

44

48
I

52
I I I

Observers 0-OR 1-OR 2-OR 3-ER 4-ER 5-GD 6-OR* 7-OE 8-EE*

A 0.65 0.73 0.76 0.68 0.66 0.60 0.57 0.70 0.48

B 0.67 0.74 0.75 0.70 0.66 0.60 0.54 0.70 0.45

C 0.62 0.61 0.65 0.68 0.67 0.69 0.40 0.50 0.46

..._.._._---*

4-

OR, oral radiology resident; ER, endodontic resident; EE, experienced endodontist; OE, oral epidemiologist; GD, general dentist. * Observer scores eliminated before deriving "true score."

5 -

TABLE 4. Logistic regression analysis for interobserver correlation of PAl scores for the 9 observers (A) and subset of 7 observers used to determine "true score" (B)
Week 0 1 4 12 24 52 Overall A 0.60 0.59 0.61 0.52 0.57 0.44 0.59 B 0.63 0.65 0.65 0.59 0.62 0.51 0.64

FrG 3. Mean PAl scores for all treated teeth over the 52-wk observation period.

degrees of freedom. W h e n the model parameters are translated into odds ratios (Table 10), teeth treated with C are 1.39 (confidence interval = 0.35, 5.50) times more likely to have a good score than teeth treated with O, controlling for base line PAI score.

Power Analysis
RESULTS WITH A WEIGHT OF ONE FOR EACH TOOTH (Table 7) The test for a difference among the treatments is not significant, with a p value of 0.1166 from a X2 of 2.21 with 2 degrees of freedom. When the model parameters are translated into odds ratios (Table 8), teeth treated with C are 1.15 (confidence interval = 0.31, 4.21) times more likely to have a good score than teeth treated with O, controlling for base line PAI score. RESULTS WITH EACH PATIENT ONLY CONTRIBUTING ONE TOOTH (Table 9) The overall test for a difference among the treatments is not significant, with a p value of 0.4587 from a )(2 of 0.79 with 2 This analysis was performed to determine if clinical significance between groups C and O would be attained at a number that was relevant to the practicing endodontist. Each patient contributed only one tooth to the power analysis, with preference given to the first tooth entered in the dataset. Each patient was limited to only one tooth for the most general sample size calculations for future studies, where number of teeth per patient is as yet unknown. Based on numbers from a generhl linear model from SAS, a 95% confidence interval for the difference in treatments C and O was found at DELTA--0.63018((1.96)(0.2649) = [ - 1 , 1 4 9 4 , -0.0826].

Vol. 25, No. 5, May 1999

Endodontic Treatment of Apical Periodontitis TABLE 5. Distribution of PAl scores at baseline for the different treatment groups C E n = 8 (31%) n = l 8 (69%) O n = 19 (42 %) n = 2 6 (58%) Total n = 34 (33 %) n = 6 8 (67%)

349

Good PAl (1 or 2) Bad PAl (3, 4, 5)

n = 7 (23 %) n = 2 4 (77%)

C, calcium hydroxide; E, empty between visits; O, one step.

TABLE 6. Distribution of PAl scores at week 52 C Good PAl (1 or 2) Bad PAl (3, 4, 5) n = 2 5 (81%) n = 6 (19%) E n = 1 4 (54%) n - 1 2 (46%) O n = 3 6 (80%) n = 9 (20%) Total n = 7 5 (73.5%) n = 2 7 (26.5%)

TABLE 7. Results with the weight of one for each tooth df Overall model Model minus intercept Base line PAl Treatment 7 6 4 2 Wald F 340.23 167.32 242.68 2.21 pValue 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.1166 4.5

P A I >3 at start

3.5
TABLE 8. Model parameters as odds ratios C Odds of good PAl vs. bad PAl Lower 95% limit Odds ratio Upper 95% limit 0.31 1.15 4.2t E 0.10 0.33 1.10 O 1.00 1.00 1.00

"---..-"%.
i i i i i

0 TABLE 9. Results with each patient contributing one tooth df Overall model Model minus intercept Base line PAl Treatment 7 6 4 2 Wald F 361.53 152.41 219.04 0.79 p Value 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.4587

12

26

52

FIG 4. PAl scores versus time for the three treatment groups when the base line has been adjusted to those teeth that started the study with a PAl score above 3.

TAeLE 10. Model parameters as odds ratios C Odds of good PAt vs. bad PAl Lower 95% limit Odds ratio Upper 95% limit 0.35 1.39 5.50 E 0.15 0.57 2.16 O 1.00 1.00 1.00

TABLE 11. Sample sizes required per group to achieve 80%, 85%, 90%, and 9 5 % power for given deltas Delta -0.6 -0.63018 -0.7 -1.0 80% 44.8989 40.7014 32.9870 16.1636 85% 51.3602 46.5586 37.7340 18.4897 90% 60.1067 54.4874 44.1600 21.6384 95% 74.3348 67.3854 54.6133 26.7605

poor results of group E, further analysis was limited to C versus O. We compared groups O and C when base line at the start of the treatment of PAI > 3. Limiting to treatments C and O and to just one record per patient, there were 41 patients who began in the "bad category" with P A I > 3. Of the 41 patients who began the study with a good PAI score (1 or 2), none moved to a higher score at the end. Of the 19 patients in treatment C, 14 (74%) improved, whereas 14 of 22 (64%) patients of treatment O improved. In a clinical situation with similar trends in improvement for treatments C and O, the needed sample size per group for a significant difference between the treatments at the 0.05 level are: 354 with 80% power, 401 with 85% power, 466 with 90% power, and 571 with 95% power. DISCUSSION Traditional follow-up prognosis studies have been of large series of patients treated with one specified protocol (15, 16), with the results measured as success rates. It is difficult or impossible to use these studies to compare treatment protocols due to the variability and subjectivity of the data in the different studies (17). This study was a prospective study on teeth with similar pathology (apical periodontitis), making the comparison between treatment protocols viable. An important added advantage, in our opinion, was the use of the PAI radiographic scoring system. This method allowed an improved radiographic interpretation over the subjective radiographic evaluations used in most previous studies. The PAI developed by Orstavik et al. (13) appears to have the potential for early, objective detection of healing with good repro-

Table 11 shows that, at this DELTA, the sample size of 67.3854 per group would be required for significance to be achieved.

Analysis Adjusted for Base Line: Improved Versus Not

Improved
Figure 4 shows PAl scores versus time for the three treatment groups when the base line has been adjusted to those teeth that started the study with a PAI score above 3. Again, because of the

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ducibility (18). It is based on a histological correlation (13, 19) with a PAI score of 1-2 defined as healed or minimally inflamed and scores 3-5 defined as diseased. However, it is still a subjective outcome prone to observer variation. To overcome this disadvantage as much as possible, we undertook the rather tedious task of calibrating observers and excluding those with statistically determined deficient performance, followed by a consensus of the better and reliable ones to provide a consensus of "true scores." This study illustrated two common problems with acquiring meaningful results in comparing endodontic treatment protocols. Firstly, if the base line apical status is not controlled for, the results can give a false impression of the efficacy of the clinical procedures. Without controlling for baseline in this study, the one-step and calcium hydroxide treatments resulted in almost identical numbers of teeth with "good" apical periodontium (i.e. PAl scores of 1 or 2). However, the calcium hydroxide group started with teeth with many more teeth in the "bad" PAI score than the one-step group. When base line was controlled by comparing the improvement of teeth which started a PAl score of > 3 and ended the 52-wk observation period with a score of < 2 , the difference of 10% (74% for calcium hydroxide vs. 64% for one-step) is important. However, even though the difference in the number of teeth with improvement was 10% for the groups being compared, we ran into the second common problem with endodontic studies in that the sample size was not large enough for statistical significance in the study. Because even the inferior treatment protocols resulted in about 60% success, it requires a large sample size to show statistically significant differences in results for different treatment protocols. These numbers are extremely difficult to achieve in a prospective study such as this one. To compensate for this problem, we performed power statistics on the data to determine the sample size at which significance could be achieved for the observed difference. In general, a sample size of 67 teeth per group would have resulted in significant differences between the singlevisit and calcium hydroxide groups. In teeth with a PAI score of > 3 (i.e. easily discernible apical radiolucencies), a sample size of 571 per group would be needed for the observed difference for improvement of the periapical status of the tooth to be significant. Whereas this number is difficult to achieve in a prospective, controlled study, the findings may still be clinically relevant. According to the literature, calcium hydroxide disinfection after chemomechanical cleaning will result in negative cultures in most cases (5), and the improvement rate of 74% for the calcium hydroxide group appears rather low in light of success rates reported for teeth with negative cultures. However, it must be taken into account that the P M evaluation is a more specific test that requires a real transition in the periapical status for success/failure analysis. Therefore, it is not surprising that the percentages are lower than the usual subjective radiographic evaluation methods of success. Leaving the canal empty without obturation or additional disinfection was clearly and consistently the worst method of treatment. This group was included primarily to serve as a bacteriological control for the single-visit cases. These results may be explained by the findings of Bystr6m et al. (20), where regrowth of bacteria in the canals occurred to levels similar to those at the start of treatment. Thus, in most cases when the canal is re-entered, the bacteria are at a level similfir to that at the start of treatment. Therefore, the inferior results for this group are not surprising, and it appears to be unacceptable to leave a previously infected canal empty between visits in clinical practice. One-step treatment has many potential advantages. It is less expensive, very well accepted by patients, and has been shown to

result in a lower flare-up rate (1 l, 12). It has been shown that instrumentation and irrigation alone decrease the number of bacteria in the canal 1000-fold (6). However, the canals cannot be rendered free of bacteria by this method alone. It has been theorized that the low number of bacteria left in the canal is below the threshold to sustain the inflammation periapically or are entombed and killed due to lack of space and nutrition after effective obturation of the space in the canal. Therefore, some have assumed that the additional disinfecting action of calcium hydroxide would not result in discernibly superior results. However, according to the results of this study, the additional disinfecting action of calcium hydroxide before obturation resulted in a 10% increase in healing rates. This difference should be considered clinically important.
Dr. Trope is JB Freedland professor and chair, Department of Endodontics, School of Dentistry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC. Dr. Delano is lecturer, Oral Radiology and Diagnosis, University of West Indies School of Dentistry, Champs F/uers, Trinidad. Dr. Orstavik is senior scientist, Scandinavian Institute of Dental Materials, Haslum, Norway, and adjunct professor, Department of Endodontics, School of Dentistry, Uni versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC. Address requests for reprints to Dr. Martin Trope, Department of Endodontics, School of Dentistry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-2707.

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