From: Terry Pannkuk
To: ROOTS
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2010 1:22 PM
Subject: [roots] Free CBCT Scan for this patient

This is a perfect example of how a CT scan after treatment helps validate and confirm your treatment.
Frankly, I find taking a CBCT preoperatively to be a waste of radiation and patient money on this particular
type of case.  It looked like a routine Maxillary first molar but I could tell right away by the lingual position
of the MB2 and the feel that it was a short mesial lingual root canal system suspected to be a very separate root.
A preoperative CBCT would have been equivocal and not really told me as much as the CBCT after obturation .
If I had been confused regarding the anatomy I could have closed it up with calcium hydroxide and looked at the
pattern of CH diffusion to help me clean and shape the case.

After obturation I wanted to validate or at least prove to the referring dentist that I didn’t perf the case,
so this CBCT was purely for my benefit; otherwise the referral would have assumed I was bullshitting and screwed up
the case, right?  Patient gets a free CBCT which is primarily for me!

Check out this interesting mesiolingual root and the fill to the tip.   There was no bleeding which would have
signaled a perf.   Exhausting case; performed in a single visit because it was vital/acute pulpitis.
There were numerous lateral ramifications in the apical third of the palatal root and the MB1 systems - - Terry