When a patient presents to the office with a draining fistula and the sinus tract leads to the source of the infection, it’s crucial to have a strategy.
3 tips that can help enhance treatment for these patients
Here are three tips that can help enhance the treatment for these patients.
1. Gutta-percha Tracing
Use gutta-percha to trace the source of the infection in the sinus tract.
To confirm the source of infection, insert the gutta-percha into the opening of the fistula and move the gutta-percha, guide it along the sinus tract toward the affected tooth.
Then take an x-ray, which will help verify to which tooth this tract leads, and you’ll be able to identify which area of the tooth the infection comes from, as well as which tooth it’s coming from.
This helps to enhance the diagnosis and the treatment plan based on the infectioun location.
2. Use a narrow suction tip
Optimize drying of the canals with a narrow suction tip. So, after irrigating, during the debridement, after irrigating with EDTA or sodium hypochlorite for decontamination of the of the tooth, drying the canals is important.
Here’s a tip to help dry the canals better: attach a narrow ultradent tip to a surgical suction tip. This narrow tip is usually used for the syringes to apply calcium hydroxide. So the tip is very narrow to fit inside the canals.
You can just attach this directly to the top of the surgical tip without screwing it on. Just the negative pressure of the suction and the size of it will fit and hold it on the end of the surgical suction. Use this setup to reach deeper into the canals to remove more moisture and possibly pus that may be expressed through the canals that could be more difficult to eliminate with paper points alone.
And using this tip can help improve the success of drying the canal before placing any medicaments.
3. Irrigate the fistula with saline
The third tip is to irrigate the fistula with saline.
Once the canal has been debrided, irrigate the sinus tract with saline solution. This will help to disrupt the microbial flora and help to clear the infection.
If there was any calcium hydroxide expressed through the canal, it will help to eliminate that.
And eliminating some of the pus will help to reduce pressure on the tooth and promote faster healing by flushing out the residual pus and contaminants.
Endodontic Tips for Treating Patients with Draining Fistulas
By incorporating these three tips into your endodontic treatment plan, you can help to improve the diagnosis, help to enhance infection control, and optimize the healing for patients with draining fistulas.
So consider using the gutta-percha for tracing, using the narrow section tip for drying and the saline irrigation for clearing the infection to improve clinical outcomes.