3P's in Retreatment Endodontics—An Often Forgotten Virtue

Separation of instrument in the root canal is a common mishap that occurs during the cleaning and shaping procedure. So many different methods have been developed to retrieve fractured instruments from root canal. Separated instrument leads to incomplete cleaning of root canal and eventually causes posttreatment disease. For successful completion of treatment, a separated instrument must be retrieved and if not, a bypass must be attempted. This article presents four cases requiring removal of separated instruments from the root canal. All four cases were successfully treated by conservative means of instrument retrieval by using two different techniques.