A 5-year audit of outcome of apicectomies carried out in a district general hospital.

Success rates of up to 90% have been claimed for apicectomy. However, the conditions that this procedure is carried out under at district general hospitals may be at variance with such studies. A 5-year audit of outcome was therefore carried out within a district general hospital. It was found that 89% of apicected teeth still remained at 5 years. Outcome was not influenced by any of the factors examined, and could not be predicted radiographically. Most failures occurred after the average postoperative review period of 10.5 months. Patient satisfaction with the procedure was high at over 90%. Based on these results it was concluded that apicectomy was an effective procedure when carried out by staff of all grades within the district general hospital, and that repeated follow-up appointments with radiographs over the first postoperative year were not useful.