How Much Do You Know About Vital Pulp Therapy?
An intact, functional primary dentition plays a critical role in children’s oral health. As such, preserving primary teeth with deep caries until their natural exfoliation is important. How much do you know about the role of vital pulp therapy in saving deciduous teeth?
Similar to restorative or surgical management of caries in primary teeth, which is straightforward, treating deep caries lesions in vital teeth with possible pulpal involvement is simple.
Vital pulp therapy focuses on treating the pulp with the hopes of retaining its vitality, instead of performing root canal treatment in which the pulp is fully removed.
Pulpotomy and indirect pulp treatment are the most commonly implemented vital pulp therapies used to manage deep caries in the primary dentition.
Assessing the pulpal status of primary teeth is the easiest part of vital pulp therapy.
Bitewing radiographs provide the most accurate assessment of the depth of the caries lesion and its proximity to the pulp.
During a pulpotomy, the coronal pulp is amputated and the remaining radicular pulp tissue is assessed and treated with a pulp medicament.
Indirect pulp treatment has lower success rates than pulpotomy in long-term studies.
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