Dental Radiation Exposure Protocol

The teeth in the experimental group were fixed to wax the patterns (7 teeth fixed to each wax pattern) and covered with a gauze patch impregnated with artificial saliva and then placed in the center of a styrofoam container filled with partially crushed rice. Five different styrofoam containers were prepared (ICP-OES-primary teeth, ICP-OES-permanent teeth, Vickers-primary teeth, Vickers-permanent teeth, SEM). Radiation (6 MV X-ray) was applied to the teeth 5 days (2Gy per day) a week during 6 weeks. This protocol called RTOG 95–01 (60Gy in 6 weeks - 2Gy once a day, 5 x a week) was designed and developed by the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) of the American College of Radiology (ACR) [18 (link)]. Radiation therapy was performed with the SAD technique at a dose rate of 400 MU/min with the anterior and posterior areas. At the end of each week, a wax pattern was removed from radiation intake. After each radiotherapy application, the teeth were taken from the container full of rice, and placed in artificial saliva, and then kept in the oven at 37 °C. This procedure was repeated every day when exposed to radiation.
Radiotherapy was applied to the teeth by a technician under the supervision of a radiation oncologist using the linear accelerator (Clinac iX, Varian, CA, USA) in the Radiation Oncology Department of Inönü University Faculty of Medicine.