Morphological changes of the apical foramen after enlargement: A scoping review of studies.

Background: To outline the current evidence on root morphological changes after enlarging the apical foramen with NiTi instruments.

Material And Methods: A search was performed in the Virtual Health Library, PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct and SciELO databases, in addition to a manual search in Google Scholar, between January 2017 and October 2023. Articles published in English that describe studies investigating root morphological changes after instrumentation 1 mm beyond the major apical foramen were included. The quality of evidence in the included studies was also analyzed.

Results: The search retrieved 367 articles. Of these, four studies were eligible for data synthesis and analysis, all of them in vitro studies. Synthesis of the results of these studies showed a larger number of root morphological changes such as experimental dentinal microcraks in samples submitted to instrumentation beyond the apical foramen when compared to micro-CT images obtained before preparation.

Conclusions: The studies analyzed in this scoping review indicate that instrumentation beyond the major foramen of the root canal, promotes morphological changes in this area and that the adoption of standardized methodologies would not only increase the accurate detection and characterization of these changes but also facilitate the application of these findings in clinical trials and patient care. Endodontics, apical morphology, root canal preparation.