PF V9: A Glossary for Things We Already Know Are There

After 40 years of looking down root canals, a consensus glossary telling me what to call the anatomy I have been looking at is exactly what I need. Not.

Ahmed and colleagues used a respectable Delphi process with 32 experts to agree definitions for 15 terms in root and canal anatomy, including accessory canals, apical deltas, isthmuses, bifid roots and the pulp chamber.

Good job I wasn’t one of the experts. I have no idea what a Transverse Canal Anastomosis is.

The exercise is methodologically sound and I can see the value for researchers, teachers and anyone trying to compare anatomical studies without discovering that everyone means something slightly different by the same word. But the paper stretches things when it implies broad clinical relevance. Calling the pulp chamber roof a “ceiling” may be linguistically tidier, but it will not improve my access cavity.

Some of the consensus is also less universal than the conclusion suggests: “minor apical foramen” reached 75% agreement and “severe root curvature” 78%. That is enough for a Delphi study, but hardly the endodontic equivalent of the Ten Commandments. The authors even acknowledge that some of the fine anatomy they define is unlikely to have direct clinical relevance.

So this is not bad research. It is careful, useful in the right setting and probably worth having if you teach or study anatomy. For day-to-day clinical endodontics, though, it feels perilously close to academic navel-gazing: a great deal of effort spent making sure we all use the same labels for things we already know are there.