Clinical success relies on repeating techniques and products that are predictable, faster, and easy to fall back on while treating patients. For practices in dentistry, it’s important that these clinical success rates are high because it provides multi-faceted benefits for both patients and their practices. Endodontists, due to the complexity of the field, uses clinical success rates as a benchmark for measuring treatments for complex endodontic issues, such as obstructed canals and endometrium infections preventing tooth disinfection and cleanings. For endodontists, it’s all about attacking the ever-growing curve of patient tooth pain and treating those conditions with the most efficacy.
What Are Clinical Success Rates?
Clinical success rates refer to the overall percentage that a technique or product is likely to succeed. Typically, drugs, vaccines, and treatment procedures go through clinical trials, and the success is determined by a regulatory body, such as the FDA, to use that product or form of treatment. Conventionally, most drugs and vaccine candidates fail as a general rule, but determining the success rate highly depends on the area being treated and the phase area of that treatment. Phases refer to the methodology used by researchers to multiply its results to reach approval, typically going through three stages before reaching the approval stage. The therapeutic area refers to the focus of treatment, whether that be oncology, autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular disease, and infectious diseases.
For endodontists, the clinical success rates we focus on are focused in our field, and the higher the percentage for that treatment or product, the more likely we can incorporate those new techniques into our practice. However, the increase in clinical success rates doesn’t just rely on the introduction of new techniques, but also on how those techniques and products are utilized over time to treat patients. The organization of appointments, changes in endodontic protocols, and other factors related to running a clinical practice heavily rely on success rates to improve.
How Success Rates Work In Endodontic Practices
Optimizing endodontics doesn’t heavily rely on skill – it is more about the introduction of new techniques that increases endodontic success rather than the mastery of those techniques. Advances in endodontic technology, when properly implemented, have the potential to increase clinical success rates and improve patient outcomes. Studies looking into how clinical success rates impact dental practices show that clinical skill doesn’t necessarily impact these success rates, but rather helps measure the techniques and products benefiting those practices once introduced. It is the gradual progression of science in endodontics that provides the most success while treating patients.
But endodontics is a heavily complex field filled with many methodologies, so how does one determine which technique or product will work? The clinical success rates can provide some idea, but they’re not bulletproof concepts, as these percentages will always account for some percentage of failure. This includes scenarios such as necrotic teeth and vertical root fractures. When failures arise, it’s ever more important to list and observe these failures and then compare them to the various techniques out there to prevent future failed treatments.
Determining Factors For High Success Rates
To further elaborate on this subject, we’ll be looking at some factors used by endodontists to expand the probability of success for patients. The long term survival of endodontically treated teeth depends on some core factors, or parameters defined by various scientific studies to create a success rating, including:
- Functional Retention: Functional retention often refers to the functionality of a technique or product
- Strictness Criteria: The strictness criteria refers to the resolution of the radiographic sign of inflammatory bone lesions around the apex of the tooth, specifically after the treatment of various endodontic conditions. Strict or stringent refers to the reduction of symptoms, while lose refers to the opposite.
- Periodontitis Scales: In cases of periodontitis, an ordinal scale of one to five, ranging from healthy to severe is often used to determine the efficacy of a technique or product.
- Type of Restoration: The type of restoration also matters in determine the efficacy of a technique or product, including indirect or direct restorations, that impacts the overall percentage.
- Length of Follow Up: Other factors, such single-visit versus multi-visits can impact the success of a treatment and help further determine more predictable results.
Clinical trials for these techniques and products are considered the most reliable for success rates in comparison to in vitro tests because of their ability to be prospective and/or retrospective. In determining failures, examinations of various techniques and products need to be observed and defined by other various factors, including:
- Pain, Swelling, and Sinus Tract Issues
- Radiographic Lesions After Treatment
- Post Debonding During Restorative Treatment
- Coronal Fractures
- Carious Lesions
- Ceramic Fractures
- Marginal Leakage Along Treated Areas
- Periodontal Disease Involvement
While studies can define their own parameters for clinical success, determining that success often depends on the stages these tests go through or halt at before being considered for approval. All of this information is considered vital for the future development of endodontic technology. Observing the factors related to endodontic treatment procedures can help further advance the ways patients receive care and provide them with a more positive experience overall.
Business Improvement Through Success Rate Analysis
Overall, it’s more about the repeatability of results and their implementation rather than a subjective look at single treatments. Even when looking at obturation techniques, it can be seen that the practices we use to perform treatments can drastically change over generations of study, practice, and review. Observing these clinical outcomes can ultimately provide better methods for managing practice long term. They can provide analysis of practice outcomes, patients satisfaction, and can help refurbish the patient’s experience by improving the overall positive rating of their procedure. For practices, this also means improvements in marketing strategies, restructure practice policies, and help improve relationships with competitive dental practices, dental product companies, and other experts in this fie
