Análise da precisão das réguas endodônticas milimetradas de diferentes marcas comerciais

Abstract

Introduction: Endodontics is an area of Dentistry that treats the dental pulp and adjacent tissues. The use of millimeter endodontic rulers is essential for several measurements along the treatment and problems related to them can lead to failures. Objectives: Evaluating the rulers of dental graduation students from Federal University of Alagoas and dental surgeons who are part of the specialization course in Endodontics at Ápice Cursos, estimating their reliability, in order to verify wheter they have the nominal measurements indicated accurately and if they present measures compatible with each other, whether they are from the same or differents brands. Methodology: Initially, the largest possible number of samples was collected by measuring the pre-established length of 20 mm with an electronic digital caliper and these were tabulated for later statistical analysis through the Analysis of Variance and Tukey's Test with a significance level of 5% using the Statistical Program Biostat 5.3. Results: 131 endodontic rulers of different brands were collected. As a result, it was observed that all groups have appeared in an avarage close to 20, which illustrates that the measured rulers of the same commercial brand present only discrete measurement variations. From a comparative point of view between the Prisma and MKLife groups, there was no significant difference. Conclusions: The variation in medians is small and doesn´t result in clinical implications, but to ensure accuracy, it is recommended to use the same ruler throughout the endodontic treatment, avoiding problems in determining the apical limit, instrumentation and filling.