Aim: To compare strontium ranelate as a pulp capping agent to bisphosphonate and calcium hydroxide.
Materials and methods: The pulps of 36 premolars from 4 dogs were exposed and capped with one of 3 test materials, namely strontium ranelate, bisphosphonate, and calcium hydroxide. Half of the specimens underwent histologic evaluation at 6 weeks and the remaining half were assessed at 12 weeks. Each slide was scored from 1 to 3 according to hard tissue formation, inflammation, and odontoblastic differentiation. The pH of the 3 materials was also measured. Data were inspected using SPSS software and the recorded scores were statistically analyzed at 6 and 12 weeks.
Results:Calcium hydroxide was the only material that exhibited discontinuous dentin bridge at both evaluation periods. Strontium ranelate showed irregular hard tissue formation in few of the samples at 12 weeks; while bishphonate did not induce any hard tissue formation. All the materials exhibited severe to moderate inflammatory reaction at 6 weeks which subsided to mild inflammation at 12 weeks. Differentiation of odontoblasts was observed with all materials at both evaluation periods with no significant differences among them. The average pH obtained for Dycal base was 9, and 12 for the catalyst; for bisphosphonate the value was 6.8; and 8.6 for strontium ranelate.
Conclusions: Strontium ranelate was not as effective as calcium hydroxide as a pulp capping agent, while bisphosphonate failed to show any potential for hard tissue formation up to 12 weeks. However, all the test materials allowed healing of the pulp tissues.