RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: Inspite of latest advances in the materials and techniques practiced for the treatment of pulpally infected teeth with better reported success rate, still the question arises for safety and effectiveness of these medicaments. AIM: The objective of the present study was to compare the effectiveness of the Low Level Laser Therapy to Mineral Trioxide Aggregate (MTA) when used for pulpotomy in vital human primary molars. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The sample consisted of 40 primary molars from 29 children aged four to seven years. The teeth were selected based on clinical, radiographic criteria and randomly allocated to two groups. All the 40 primary molars were subjected to standard pulpotomy procedure, where in 20 molars received MTA (Group I) and 20 molars received LLLT (Group II) pulpotomy. Children were recalled at 3, 6 and 12 months intervals and pulpotomised molars were examined clinically and radiographically. Data was analysed using chi-square test. RESULTS: MTA showed 94.7% success rate at all the three intervals, where as LLLT showed a success of 95% at three months, which decreased gradually to 85% at six months and 80% at 12 months. Intergroup comparisons were not significant. CONCLUSION: Low level laser therapy can be considered for primary teeth pulpotomy and its success is comparable to MTA pulpotomy technique.