Evaluation of Dental Pulp Testing: Simple Literature Review

Background: As a dentist, a variety of tests available to help diagnose or monitor the treatment progress are important to understand in order to provide the best care for patients. One of the tests that can be important in diagnosing some important daily-seen conditions is pulp testing. This test has variable indications and can be performed in variable techniques with different materials. Objectives: We aimed to have an overview of the current methods of pulp testing, their interpretation, and newly developed methods. Method: PubMed database was used for articles selection, and the following keys used in the MeSH ((“Dental Pulp Disease"[MeSH]) AND (“Dental Pulp Testing"[MeSH])). Conclusion: The importance of doing these tests is to detect the viability and health of the tissue. This is done after dental trauma and in investigating for dental and oral pathologies. The golden standard of determining the viability is histological slide examination, which helps in the assessment of the grade and extension of inflammation and/or necrosis. Vascular status assessment by Doppler flowmetry is reliable and can be a possible standard in diagnosing pulp vitality. Moreover, pulp oximetry shows accuracy in diagnosing pulp pathologies.