Enlargement of the apical gap after laser root resection

An apical filling material should establish, as perfect as possible, the hermetic sealing of an apical cavity. However, a gap is formed between the filling material (gutta-percha) and the root canal wall. The egress of irritants into the root canal system to the periapical tissues is considered the principal cause of fails in apicoectomy and retro-filling, being assumed that irritants penetrate mainly through the gap located between the gutta-percha and the dentin. In this paper, we report the observation of an enlargement of the apical gap, after laser apicoectomy, comparing to conventional apicoectomy. The samples were divided into groups, and the conventional apicoectomy group, together with the Er:YAG laser group (400 mJ/10 Hz) produced both similar results, being the gap unaltered. On the other hand, the samples that were irradiated with the Er:YAG laser, followed by Nd:YAG laser irradiation (1.5 W/10 Hz) presented a larger gap, conclusions that were drawn from Scanning Electronic Microscope analysis. The enlargement of the gap was due to the fusion of the dentin on the border, close to the gutta-percha. This pronounced behavior might have been caused by the surface discontinuity, imposing a non-homogeneous condition, in relation to heat propagation, existing many clinical applications of these observations.