Endodoncia

BMC Oral Health

BioMed Central

Open Access

Research article

Endodontic flare-ups: comparison of incidence between single and
multiple visit procedures in patients attending a Nigerian teaching
hospital
Adeleke O Oginni*† and Christopher I Udoye†
Address: Department of Restorative Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, College of Health Sciences, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, OsunState,
Nigeria
Email: Adeleke O Oginni* - adelekeoginni@yahoo.co.uk; Christopher I Udoye - udoye432@yahoo.co.uk
* Corresponding author †Equal contributors

Published: 26 November 2004
BMC Oral Health 2004, 4:4

doi:10.1186/1472-6831-4-4

Received: 06 July 2004
Accepted: 26 November 2004

This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6831/4/4
© 2004 Oginni andUdoye; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract
Background: Until recently the most accepted technique of doing root canaltreatment stresses
multiple visit procedure. Most schools also concentrated upon teaching the multi-visit concept.
However, it has now been reported that the procedure of single visit treatment is advocated by at
least 70% of schools in all geographical areas. It was therefore the aims of the present study to find
the incidence of post-obturation flare-ups following single and multiple visitendodontic treatment
procedures, and to establish the relationship between pre-operative and post-obturation pain in
patients referred for endodontic therapy in a Nigerian teaching Hospital.
Methods: Data collected included pulp vitality status, the presence or absence of pre-operative,
inter-appointment and post-obturation pain. Pain was recorded as none, slight, or moderate/
severe. Flare-upswere defined as either patient's report of pain not controlled with over the
counter medication or as increasing swelling. The patients were recalled at three specific postobturation periods, 1st, 7th and 30th day. The presence or absence of pain, or the appropriate degree
of pain was recorded for each recall visits and the interval between visits. The compiled data were
analysed using chi-squarewhere applicable. P level ≤ 0.05 was taken as significant.
Results: Ten endodontic flare-ups (8.1%) were recorded in the multiple visit group compared to
19 (18.3%) flare-ups for the single visit group, P = 0.02. For both single and multiple visit
procedures, there were statistically significant correlations between pre-operative and postobturation pain (P = 0.002 and P = 0.0004 respectively).Teeth with vital pulps reported the lowest
frequency of post-obturation pain (48.8%), while those with nonvital pulps were found to have the
highest frequency of post-obturation pain (50.3%), P = 0.9.
Conclusion: The present study reported higher incidences of post-obturation pain and flare-ups
following the single visit procedures. However, single visit endodontic therapy has been shown tobe a safe and effective alternative to multiple visit treatment, especially in communities where
patients default after the first appointment at which pain is relieved.

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BMC Oral Health 2004, 4:4

Background
Until recently the most accepted technique of doing endodontic treatment stresses multiple visit procedures. Most
schools alsoconcentrated upon teaching the multi-visit
concept. However, it has now been reported that the procedure of single visit treatment is advocated by at least
70% of schools in all geographical areas [1].
Some of the problems of root canal treatment are postobturation pain, inter-appointment pain and swelling.
Although these in most cases do not last long, but could
be a source of embarrassment...