Poor quality evidence suggests that failure rates for atraumatic restorative treatment and conventional amalgam are similar.
METHODS
The Medline, Cochrane CENTRAL, Biomed Central, Database of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), OpenJ-Gate, Bibliografia Brasileira de Odontologia (BBO), LILACS, IndMed, Sabinet, Scielo, Scirus (Medicine), OpenSIGLE and Google Scholar databases were searched. Hand searching was performed for journals not indexed in the databases. References of included trials were checked.


METHODS
Prospective clinical trials with test and control groups with a follow up of at least one year were included.


METHODS
Data abstraction was conducted independently and clinical and methodologically homogeneous data were pooled using a fixed-effects model.


RESULTS
Eighteen trials were included. From these 32 individual dichotomous datasets were extracted and analysed. The majority of the results show no differences between both types of intervention. A high risk of selection-, performance-, detection- and attrition bias was identified. Existing research gaps are mainly due to lack of trials and small sample size.


CONCLUSIONS
The current evidence indicates that the failure rate of high-viscosity GIC/ART restorations is not higher than, but similar to that of conventional amalgam fillings after periods longer than one year. These results are in line with the conclusions drawn during the original systematic review. There is a high risk that these results are affected by bias, and thus confirmation by further trials with suitably high numbers of participants is needed.
Queen Mary University of London, Barts & The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Institute of Dentistry, UK.
Dominic
D
Hurst