COMPARATIVE EVALUATION OF THE EFFICACY OF BRIX3000, SMART BURS, AND CONVENTIONAL METHOD IN CARIES EXCAVATION.

In this era of “Minimal Invasive Dentistry” preserving tooth structure, is increasingly becoming a standard in dental practice.  Conventional caries removal and cavity preparation entails the use of high-speed handpiece and burs which undoubtedly improved the speed and efficiency of cavity preparation but has many inevitable disadvantages. To overcome these, various newer caries excavation techniques have been suggested like air abrasion, air polishing, ultrasonic, Sono abrasion, lasers and the chemomechanical caries removal technique.

Chemomechanical caries removal (CMCR) is a non-invasive technique of removal of caries via eliminating infected dentin. BRIX-3000, papain-based chemical mechanical agent, with a proteolytic enzyme obtained from leaves latex and fruits of green papaya (Carica Papaya) that acts as a chemical debriding agent.

Another minimally invasive method of caries removal is by using polymer burs. The cutting edges will wear down in contact with harder materials, such as healthy dentin.

The recruited patients will be distributed equally into three groups

ü  Group I – Conventional method (n=22)

ü  Group II – BRIX3000 (n=22)

ü  Group III - Smart Burs (n=22)

Caries excavation will be done with respective agents, and the working time will be calculated. Microbial analysis will be carried out, thus all the samples will be evaluated for a total reduction in the bacterial count (CFU) and mean working time

study hypothesis is that minimal invasive technique can prove that they can effectively remove all the caries as well preserve tooth structure