178ANTIMICROBIAL EFFICACY OF CASSIA FISTULA BARK EXTRACT ON ENTEROCOCCUS FAECALIS AND CANDIDA ALBICANS – AN INVITRO COMPARATIVE STUDYThe aim of this study was to evaluate invitro the antimicrobial efficacy Cassia Fistula bark extract on Enterococcus Faecalis and Candida Albicans. The objective was to find out whether Cassia Fistula bark extract could be used as an alternate phytochemical root canal irrigant to sodium hypochlorite. Cassia Fistula barks were washed, air dried for 7-8 days and grounded into powder. Of which 100 g weighed powder was taken for extraction in the flask of soxhelet apparatus using ethanol and water (aqueous solution) as solvents. The above extracts were filtered using whatman’s no 1 filter paper and the filtrates were then evaporated to dryness in a rotary evaporator. The extracts were labelled and stored in sterile screw capped bottle under 20ᵒ c until further analysis. For the determination of minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) plate dilution method was followed. The Medium used was Nutrient Agar. The seeded plates were incubated at 370c for 48 hours and the growth is noted down for different extracts separately. All the experiments were done in triplicates. The results obtained from this study was done measuring the inhibition zone diameter (IZD) and evaluating the means value, it was observed that both aqueous extract and ethanol extract of cassia fistula is having antimicrobial activity against Enterococcus Faecalis and Candida Albicans. The statistical value obtained showed that ethanol extracts of Cassia Fistula performed better against Enterococcus Faecalis [24.00 ± 3.61] and aqueous extract of Cassia Fistula performed better against Candida Albicans [13.33 ± 2.51]. Comparing with that of Sodium Hypochlorite (positive control group) ethanol extract of Cassia Fistula shows better activity than Sodium Hypochlorite (24±3.16)(p value 0.001) which shows highly significant at 1%. Within the limitations of this study, it can be concluded that cassia fistula extracted with methanol had better antimicrobial property on Enterococcus Faecalis than Sodium Hypochlorite.drgovindsl89@gmail.comResearch732017Cassia Fistula, Inhibition Zone,Enterococcus Faecalis,Candida Albicans,Antimicrobial ActivityYadav Chakravarthy,Govind SLDepartment of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics, Vinayaka Mission Sankarachariyar Dental College, Salem, Tamil Nadu, India,Department of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics, Vinayaka Mission Sankarachariyar Dental College, Salem, Tamil Nadu, India