Comparison of apical and coronal sealing in canals having tapered cones prepared with a rotary NiTi system and stainless steel instruments

The purpose of this study was to compare the sealing ability of different tapered gutta percha cones that were used with lateral compaction and single cones in canals prepared with various root canal instruments. One hundred extracted maxillary incisor roots were used. In group 1, 30 roots were prepared with stainless steel instruments (SS) and then filled by the lateral compaction technique using .02 tapered master cones. In group 2, 30 roots were prepared with ProFile nickel titanium instruments (NiTi) and filled in the same way as group 1. In group 3, 30 roots were filled by the single cone technique using 0.06 tapered gutta-percha cones. The remaining 10 teeth were taken as two control groups. Apical and coronal leakage was evaluated using the fluid filtration model. Considering the effects of the instrumentation, no statistically significant differences were found between the groups prepared with SS and NiTi (P > 0.05). When the effects of obturation technique were taken into consideration, the ProFile instruments and lateral compaction resulted in significantly less coronal leakage than the SS instruments and lateral compaction (P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in apical leakage among any of the groups (P > 0.05).