Introduction: Regenerative endodontics provides hope of converting the non-vital tooth into vital once again. It focuses on substituting traumatized and pathological pulp with functional pulp tissue. Current regenerative procedures successfully produce root development but still fail to re-establish real pulp tissue and give unpredictable results. There are several drawbacks that need to be addressed to improve the quality and efficiency of the treatment.
Aim: The aim of this review article is to discuss major priorities that ought to be dealt before applications of regenerative endodontics flourish the clinical practice.
Materials and methods: A web-based research on MEDLINE was done using filter terms Review, published in the last 10 years and Dental journals. Keywords used for research were "regenerative endodontics," "dental stem cells," "growth factor regeneration," "scaffolds," and "challenges in regeneration." This review article screened about 150 articles and then the relevant information was compiled.
Results: Inspite of the impressive growth in regenerative endodontic field, there are certain loopholes in the existing treatment protocols that might sometimes result in undesired and unpredictable outcomes.
Conclusion: Considerable research and development efforts are required to improve and update existing regenerative endodontic strategies to make it an effective, safe, and biological mode to save teeth.
Keywords: Endodontics; regeneration; stem cells; tissue engineering.