Department of Endodontics
Funded Research

2007-2008: American Association of Endodontists Research and Education Foundation (pilot study - $2,500.). P.I. = Dr. Hongsa Situ; Co-I's: Drs Mohamed Fayad and Bradford R Johnson. Biological markers for odontogenic periradicular periodontitis.

2003-2005: Wach Fund ($8,255.). Prinicipal investigator: Bradford R Johnson. A Chairside Aid for Shared Decision Making in Dentistry.

The Department of Endodontics is pleased to announce that all of its second year postgraduate students received partial funding from the American Association of Endodontists Foundation. Here then is a listing of the research approved:

This is a study to compare the use of dental loupes and a surgical operating microscope in locating the mesiolingual canal in maxillary molars. Endodontists who perform conventional endodontics without the use of any magnification and others who perform the entire procedure with dental loupes or the SOM will be asked to document all of their maxillary first and second molar cases for a time period of six months. The documentation forms will be compiled and analyzed and it will be determined if there is a statistical difference in the percentage of the ML canals located without magnification vs. magnification.

Little information about the endodontic needs and the occurrence of periapical lesions exists in the U.S. patient sub-populations. The project's goal is to evaluate the incidence of pre-existing endodontic pathology and the occurrence of periapical lesions in two different socio-economic groups of newly registered patients at a midwestern dental school in a large urban setting. The relationship between the existence of radiographic periapical pathology in both endodontic and non-endodontic treated teeth of two different adult patient populations at the College of Dentistry would be analyzed, stratified with reference to source, sex, and age. This assessment would be based on reviewing the patients' dental record and in particular, the full-mouth radiographic series. Obtaining such information would be beneficial in analyzing the patient-pools enrolling for care, developing dental education programs, establishing needed endodontic treatment modalities, anticipating future geographic shortages of practitioners and evaluating the annual requirements for additional trained post-graduate specialists in endodontics.

This is a survey targeting active members of the AAE to determine the impact that managed care has on the practice of endodontics. The survey is derived in part from a survey published in the QSDP Special Topics, 1994 third quarter, dealing with contractual agreements.

An endodontic perforation may be defined as an artificial opening in a tooth or its root, created by boring, cutting, or pathologic resorption which results in a communication between the pulp canal and periodontal tissues. Root perforation repair materials and techniques are essential to improving the prognosis of perforated teeth. Through the use of harvesting human PDL fibroblasts, cells will be cultured with the various restorative materials to determine which materials show the greatest biocompatibility with these cells. An ideal response clinically would include attachment of PDL cells to both tooth structure and repair material.