Antibiotics as intracanal medicaments: a review.

Antibiotics are an extremely valuable addition to the armamentarium available to health practitioners for management of bacterial infections. Due to the potential risk of adverse systemic effects of systemic applications and ineffectiveness of systemic antibiotics in the necrotic pulpless tooth and the periradicular tissues, local application of antibiotics may be a more effective mode for delivering antibiotics to infected root canals. This paper reviews the history, rationale, and applications of antibiotics and antibiotics-containing medicaments in endodontics.