Frequency of persistent tooth pain after root canal therapy: a systematic review and meta-analysis

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

High quality studies report that almost one in ten patients experience post-operative pain after root canal therapy.

Main

Nixdorf DR, Moana-Filho EJ et al. J Endod 2010; 36: 224–230

In this study, the criterion adopted for endodontic failure was a patient-centred outcome, that of persistent pain. This symptom had to occur for at least 6 months following completion of the endodontic procedure. No restriction was placed on what provoked the pain. Only permanent teeth that had received root canal therapy, including re-treatments, were included. Of 770 articles accessed, 14 were identified by hand searching. Several papers were published in languages other than English. Twenty-six papers met inclusion criteria. The meta-analysis revealed a startling difference between the numbers of patients who experienced post-operative pain in prospective studies compared with those from retrospective studies (7.6% ν 0.9% respectively). The overall frequency for persistent pain was 5.3%.