Critical evaluation of ex vivo restoration of carious equine maxillary cheek teeth infundibulae following high-pressure gas and micro-particle abrasion.

This research article investigates the effectiveness of a common treatment for carious equine maxillary cheek teeth infundibulae, where high-pressure abrasive particles and a filling material are used. The study finds that this treatment is only partially effective, fully cleaning and restoring less than half of the infundibulae.

Objectives and Methodology

• The main aim of the article is to evaluate the effectiveness of a popular treatment for a common dental disorder in horses. This disorder, infundibular caries, affects the equine maxillary cheek teeth and can lead to dental fracture or infection.
• The treatment procedure consists of first removing food debris and carious dental tissue using high-pressure abrasion with aluminium hydroxide micro-particles. The cleaned defects are then filled with endodontic restorative materials.
• The research involved forty maxillary cheek teeth, extracted post-mortem from 21 adult horses, which contained 55 cases of infundibular caries. Five of the teeth were sectioned before treatment to facilitate examination of the carious infundibulae.
• High-pressure abrasion with aluminium hydroxide particles was then used to clean the remaining carious infundibulae. Another five teeth were sectioned to assess the effectiveness of this cleaning process.
• The remaining 30 teeth containing 39 carious infundibulae were filled with a composite restorative material and then assessed by computed tomography imaging and direct visual examination after sectioning the teeth.

Findings and Conclusions

• The study found that only 46% of the treated infundibulae were fully cleaned of food debris and carious material, and then filled to their full depth with the restorative material.
• Of these fully cleaned and restored infundibulae, further flaws were found in 11 due to peripheral defects around the restoration. This meant that only 18% of the restorations were without any gross defects.
• The remaining 54% of treated infundibulae still contained food debris or carious material in deeper sections.
• The study concluded that high-pressure micro-particle abrasion is only effective at cleaning food debris from shallow carious infundibulae. As a result, the majority of subsequent restorations were found to be imperfect, indicating a limited effectiveness of this treatment approach.