Evaluation of apical microleakage of teeth sealed with two different root canal sealers using two instrumentation techniques

Background : The purpose of this in vitro study was to compare, using a dye penetration test, the sealing ability of two commonly used root canal sealers, Endofil sealer (Produits Dentaires SA, Switzerland) and ZOB sealer (Meta Biodent, Korea) after preparation of the root canals with rotary protaper (crown-down) technique and hand instrumentation (step-back) technique. Materials and methods : 40 single rooted freshly extracted human teeth were used in this study. The teeth were sectioned at the cementoenamel junction and instrumented by either protaper technique or step-back technique. After that the samples were divided in to 4 groups with 10 samples each. Then the samples obturated using either ZOB sealer or Endofill sealer. All samples were stored in methylene blue with concentration of 1 % for 7 days. Later on the teeth were removed from the dye and sectioned longitudinally with diamond disc and examined under stereomicroscope to measure the level of micro leakage. Results : The results revealed that protaper technique has higher values of micro leakage than step-back technique and a significant difference was found in comparing protaper + Endofill with step-back + Endofill. Conclusion : Protaper technique exhibit higher micro leakage values than step-back technique regardless of type of sealer used.