Comparison of antibacterial effectiveness of three rotary file system with different geometry in infected root canals before and after instrumentation–a double-blinded randomized controlled clinical trial

Abstract Introduction To compare the antibacterial effectiveness of three rotary file systems i.e., ProTaper Next, ProTaper Gold and XP-endo Shaper in root canals of teeth with asymptomatic apical periodontitis by using the real-time polymerase chain reaction. Materials and methods Root canals from single or multi-rooted teeth (straight canals) with necrotic pulps and asymptomatic apical periodontitis were instrumented using either ProTaper Next (n = 20), ProTaper Gold (n = 20) and XP-endo Shaper (n = 20) under irrigation with 3% sodium hypochlorite. Samples obtained before and after instrumentation were subjected to DNA extraction, amplification and quantitation of total amount of bacteria by using the real-time polymerase chain reaction. Results Samples were taken before preparation (S1) were positive for presence of bacteria, with mean numbers of 9.94 × 107, 20.4 × 107 and 9.20 × 107 bacterial cells for the ProTaper Next, ProTaper Gold and XP-endo Shaper groups, respectively. After preparation (S2) with ProTaper Next, ProTaper Gold, and XP-endo Shaper, root canals still had bacteria with mean counts of 11.8 × 105, 87.2 × 105 and 4.52 × 105 bacterial cells, respectively. Both XP-endo Shaper (99.50%) and ProTaper Next (98.81%) were effective in reducing total bacterial count, and there was no statistically significant difference between them (P > 0.05). XP-endo Shaper succeeded in reducing total bacterial count than ProTaper Gold (95.72%) and there exists statistically significant difference between them (P  Conclusions XP-endo Shaper was highly effective in reducing total bacterial count from root canals of teeth with asymptomatic apical periodontitis than ProTaper Gold. ProTaper Next also showed improved microbial reduction percentage as compared with ProTaper Gold.