Incidence of instrument separation using LightSpeed rotary instruments.

The use of nickel-titanium rotary instrument systems has gained popularity over the past 10 years. One of these instrument systems is the LightSpeed (LightSpeed Technology, Inc, San Antonio, TX). One drawback for all nickel-titanium rotary instruments is the incidence of instrument separation. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the incidence of nonretrievable instrument separation using the LightSpeed system in a clinical setting. A total of 3543 canals were treated over a 24 month period and during that time, 46 LightSpeed instruments were separated and found to be nonretrievable, resulting in a separation rate of 1.30%. This rate was lower than previous reported studies.