Summary: | Nowadays, dental cements are part of the fundamental materials in several dental treatments, in order to solve problems usually related to bacterial infections that occur in the dentition and that need an adequate restoration that can maintain the integrity of that same dentition. Dental cement is essential in root canal treatments (often called dental devitalization), and its main objective is to prevent the occurrence of a second infection, so it is necessary that the cements used seal the entire space between the canal system roots and the surrounding tissues so as not to allow the passage of microorganisms. It is also important that the cements have antimicrobial properties, however, this capacity of the materials used in the production of the cements ends up deteriorating with the passage of time, making the task of inhibiting a secondary infection difficult. The porosity of cements is directly linked to the formation of these biofilms, the smaller this is, the less the possibility of bacteria entering the interior, which makes the percentage of porosity related to the probability of formation of a bacterial biofilm responsible for injuries such as post-treatment apical periodontitis. Micro-CT, a non-destructive technology (NDT), was the technique chosen for the analysis of dental cements using Skyscan 2211 and allowed for a careful study of porosity throughout the sample volume. This technique made possible not only the analysis of the porosity inherent in each of the dental cements analyzed, but also provided information of enormous importance regarding the dimensions of the pores present in each sample.
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