The clinical efficacy of calcium hydroxide as interacanal medication

Objective To study the curative effect of calcium hydroxide as intracanal medicament of teeth with a large periapical lesion.Methods Fifty-nine infected cases with large periapical lesions(the periapical index was four or five) were included in the study. Of these cases,calcium hydroxide was placed in the instrumented root canals of 30 teeth;Formocresol(FC) was used for intracanal dressing in the canals of 29 cases.The curative effects were observed 6 months after the final obturations and evaluated based on radiographic and clinical results using the periapical index(PAI).Results The healing and incompletely healing rates in calcium hydroxide dressing group were 93.3%,those of the Formocresol dressing group were 86.2%.There was no statistically significant difference between the groups(P0.05).Conclusions Calcium hydroxide is an ideal intracanal medicament.