Reducing root canal treatment failure among patients attending University of Rwanda Polyclinic

Abstract

Background: Root canal therapy removes bacterially infected pulp tissue from the root canal structure. This can fail due to bugs that leave bacteria in the root canal. There are some errors like overfilling, under-filling, perforation, lack of uniformity, poor irrigation and instrument breakage. If such an error exists, the treatment will have to be repeated, which can lead to high costs and even tooth loss for the patient. Clearing the root canal system of bacteria is key to successful endodontic treatment

Root cause: The main root cause was identified “lack of root canal treatment protocol”. Objective: To reduce the rate of root canal failure from 36.2% to 14% at UR Polyclinic in twelve months.

Design: This project used a pre-intervention and post-intervention study design. Intervention: To develop root canal treatment Protocol and Train the clinicians on its importance Results: In the pre-intervention period, 55 patients (36.2%) out of 152 patients their root canal treatment were failed in one year , on post-intervention within three months out of 47 patients only 6 patients were failed(12.8%). We compared 3months of pre and post-intervention, we found RCT failure reduced significantly from 36.2% to 12.8%. With P-value 0f 0.002

Conclusion and Recommendation Root canal protocols are intended to provide clear, practical recommendations and advice so that dental teams can manage and treat their patients in a standardized manner. The results shown that abiding to the root canal treatment protocol reduced root canal treatment failure significantly. As a recommendation, more long-term follow-up is needed to ensure the sustainability of the project