Cyclic fatigue fracture remains a major concern during root canal instrumentation, particularly in curved canals. EdgeTaper Platinum and ProTaper Gold (PTG) are heat-treated nickel-titanium rotary systems designed to improve mechanical performance, but the available evidence comparing their cyclic fatigue resistance is inconsistent. This systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to compare the cyclic fatigue resistance of these two systems. A systematic search was performed in PubMed, Scopus, Embase, EBSCOhost, and Google Scholar, along with manual searching and reference screening. No restrictions were applied for language or year of publication. In vitro studies comparing EdgeTaper Platinum and PTG for cyclic fatigue resistance were included. Data extraction and study selection were performed independently. Risk of bias was assessed using the QUIN (QUality assessment tool for IN vitro studies) tool. Quantitative synthesis was performed using a random-effects model. Seven in vitro studies were included in the qualitative synthesis, and four studies were included in the primary meta-analysis. Most individual studies reported higher cyclic fatigue resistance for EdgeTaper Platinum, although one study favored PTG and one did not show a clear direct pairwise difference. The pooled analysis demonstrated a statistically significant overall effect in favor of EdgeTaper Platinum for cyclic fatigue resistance. However, substantial heterogeneity was observed across studies, likely due to differences in canal geometry, file size, testing temperature, and environmental conditions. Within the limitations of the available in vitro evidence, EdgeTaper Platinum showed a more consistent advantage in cyclic fatigue resistance than PTG. Nevertheless, the high heterogeneity among studies suggests that this advantage is not uniform across all testing models, and more standardized comparative studies are needed.
Kalluri et al. (Thu,) studied this question.