Morphological change study on root surfaces treated with curettes, sonic instruments or Er:YAG laser

Periodontal disease is caused by dental plaque and dental calculus on roots surfaces, specially on cervical areas. As dental plaque is the main cause and dental calculus a secondary one, it is practically impossible to separate one factor to the other one. In order to get periodontal tissue health it is necessary to eliminate dental plaque and calculus from root surfaces. In this sense, Er:YAG laser comes in as an excellent way to control periodontal disease, not only, by removing calculus and dental plaque but also for its bacteria reduction. The aim of this study is to compare, by S.E.M., root surfaces changing when they are treated with curettes and ultrasonic scaling or Er:YAG laser irradiation with two different energy levels of 60 mJ/pulse and 100 mJ/pulse and repetition tax of 10 Hz (in the display). It is also objective of this study to check a possible thermic damage to pulp tissue when the roots surfaces are irradiated with Er:YAG laser. We used for this study, five human dental roots, each one of them were cut into four samples, giving us a total of twenty samples, which were divided in five groups of four samples each one. The control group, we did not indicated any kind of treatment. The first group, the roots samples were scaled and planned with Gracey curettes 5/6 and 7/8. The second group, the roots samples were treated with ultrasonic instruments. The third group was irradiated with Er:YAG laser using 60 mJ/pulse , 10 Hz and energy density of 4 J/cm2 (approximated). The fourth group was irradiated with Er:YAG laser using 100 mJ/pulse, 10 Hz and energy density of 7 J/cm2 (approximated). The results analysis showed that roots scaling either with Gracey curettes or with ultrasonic instruments created smear layer covering roots surfaces; roots surfaces irradiated with Er:YAG laser showed few roughness in the third group; roots surfaces irradiated with Er:YAG laser showed no smear layer and the Er:YAG laser irradiation did not bring any thermic damage to pulp tissue. (author)