Quality Assessment of Root Canal Treatment Performed by Dental Students at Western University, Thailand

摘要

Dental students should have quality to perform RCT efficiently. The assessment root canal treatment (RCT) performed by the dental students is important to improve the clinical skill and dental education. The objective of this study was to access the quality of RCT performed by undergraduate dental students in Faculty of Dentistry, Western University, Thailand. A retrospective was conducted at Faculty of Dentistry, Western University, Thailand to access the RCT performed by undergraduate students. After obtaining the ethical approval, the study was conducted from September till December 2017. Intraoral periapical radiographs of 120 patients (a total of 134 teeth) who were treated with RCT were studied by one Endodontist. The evaluation criteria of the RCT were root canal obturation length, obturation density (homogeneity), and obturation taper. Microsoft Excel 2010 and SPSS version 20 (IBM Company, Chicago, USA) were used for the descriptive statistics and expressed as mean and percentage. Chi-Square test (for nominal data) was done to see the significant difference (P <0.001) among unacceptable, slightly acceptable, acceptable, perfect length of RCT. Pearson’s correlations will be done of length, density and taper of RCT with different teeth. For the length of RCT, the majority of the root canal filling had good length of filling with perfect length 66 (49.3%) and acceptable length 59 (44%) but only 2 (1.5%) showed unacceptable length. For the density of RCT, 66 (49.3%) had perfect density and 59 (44%) had acceptable density of root canal filling but only 4 (3%) showed unacceptable density. For the taper of RCT, majority 121 (90.3%) showed perfect, 11 (8.2%) showed acceptable and 2 (1.5%) showed unacceptable. Finally, of 134 root canal treated teeth, 3 (2.24%) had unacceptable and slightly acceptable quality, 30 (22.39%) had treatment of acceptable quality, and 98 (78.13%) teeth had perfectly acceptable quality. The quality of RCT performed by undergraduate students in Western University, Thailand was satisfactory to good. Still, to obtain more better results, emphasis can be given on the technical quality of RCT.