Patient Satisfaction and Long‐Term Outcomes: A 7‐ to 9‐Year Prospective Cohort Study of Root Canal Treatment in the Swedish Public Dental Service
Bibliographic record
Abstract
AIM: This prospective follow-up study aimed to assess patient satisfaction with root canal treatment (RCT) 7-9 years after initiation in a general dental practice setting. METHOD: A study population of 243 patients initiated RCT at 20 public dental clinics in the Västra Götaland Region, Sweden. One to 3 years later, 159 patients (67.4%) responded to an 8-item questionnaire assessing patient satisfaction with RCT and treatment results. The questionnaire was sent out again 7-9 years after treatment initiation. Descriptive and analytical statistics were used to compare respondents and non-respondents, tooth groups and comparison over time. RESULTS: A total of 156 patients (72.2%) responded to the 7-9 years' questionnaire; 82 women (52.6%) and 74 men (47.4%) with a mean age of 59.3 years (SD = ±15.3). Non-respondents were significantly younger (p < 0.001). The majority of RCTs were reported as completed with a root filling (n = 102, 65.4%), although significantly fewer molars were completed (n = 43, 56.6%; p < 0.001). Sixty-six patients (63.5%) reported no current pain, while most of those reporting pain described it as mild (n = 30, 90.9%). More than half of the root filled incisors were associated with current pain (n = 15, 57.7%; p < 0.009). A total of 111 patients (76.0%) recalled the procedure as painful. Chewing ability received the highest satisfaction rating (mean = 1.3). The majority of patients reported they would choose RCT again (n = 114, 77.0%). Among the 17 who answered 'No', 13 had undergone extraction, and 3 reported persistent pain following RCT. Over time, the number of extracted teeth increased (p < 0.001), while current pain intensity decreased and retrospective satisfaction with RCT improved (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Seven to nine years after the initiation of RCT in this general dental practice setting, patient satisfaction remains high despite one-third of treated teeth being reported as extracted. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating patient-reported outcomes in the evaluation of dental procedures, including endodontic treatments.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".