Introduction: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of XP- Endo finisher (XP) (FKG Dentaire SA, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland) on removal of debris from coronal, middle and apical thirds of oval root canals in comparison to passive ultrasonic irrigation (PUI), vibringe (VB) and conventional syringe irrigation (CSI).
Methods: Eighty extracted single-rooted human mandibular premolars were used in this study. Specimens with a standardized length of 16 mm were mechanically prepared with Race (FKG Dentaire) till # 40/4%. Teeth were divided into 4 groups (n=20) according to the final irrigant activation protocol into the following groups: CSI, PUI, XP and VB. Root canals were then split longitudinally. Digital images were acquired to evaluate the amount of debris by using a digital camera mounted on a stereomicroscope at 25x magnification and transferred to the computer and scored in mm2 and recorded as a percentage of the overall canal surface area by using image analysis software. Debris percentage was analyzed by One-way ANOVA.
Results: The XP and PUI groups revealed significantly lower debris percentage than the other groups in the coronal, middle, and apical regions (P≤0.05). There was no statistically significant difference between XP and PUI. Regarding all systems the coronal third was cleaner than the apical thirds.
Conclusions: In our study, none of the activation systems completely removed the debris from the root canal walls; nevertheless, the XP and PUI showed the best results along all thirds in comparison to the other systems.