Endodontic canal preparation: innovations in glide path management and shaping canals.

prepared when shaping files have a reproducible and sufficiently-sized pathway to follow. The secret to shaping success is glide path management (GPM), which may be thought of as procedures directed toward "securing" canals. Any portion of any canal is termed secured when a small-sized flexible hand file can reproducibly slip, slide, and glide through a catheterized canal.1 Similar to a cardiac surgeon performing coronary angioplasty, dentists insert and slide a small-sized, flexible file through the length of a root canal to verify a smooth reproducible pathway exists for shaping files to follow.