Dental preparations for adhesive restorations in primary molars: Systematic review

This review is a survey of prospective studies on the clinical performance of light cured direct adhesive restorative materials, in class I and class II restorations performed in primary molars, with a minimum follow–up period of 24 months. Objective: Evaluate the influence on the longevity of these restorations, considering scientific-based evidence, irrespective of whether or not the cavity preparations had been done with a bevel on the enamel cavosurface margins. Methods: The Databases were extracted from the Cochrane Oral Health Group Trials Register, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), OVID/MEDLINE R, PUBMED, BIREME from the electronic databases covering the period from January 1966 to July 2007 with a combination of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) such as: dental cavity preparation; tooth/deciduous; primary dentition; randomized controlled trial; restorations; failure; and including the same free text terms. In addition to screening the bibliography of included original articles, selected authors were contacted, and hand-search of relevant journals was conducted. All papers were reviewed and assessed by two researchers considering well-designed prospective randomized controlled trials using light cured direct adhesive restorative materials, with a minimum follow-up period of 24 months; physically and mentally healthy children with all their primary molars, with untreated primary caries lesions in primary molars, in which no clinical or radiographic signs of pulpal or periradicular pathology or bruxism were observed. The selected articles were classified into A, B or C categories, according to study consistency

Results:Two full articles were categorized as B, but as they reported results of the same study at 24 and 48-months, only one study was considered. Its conclusion revealed that the conventional conservative bevel on the cavity preparation was slightly preferable to the conventional design without bevel

Conclusion:Only one study evaluated the longevity of class I and class II restorations, by comparing three types of dental cavity preparations in primary molars and two brands of resin composites. Beveled conventional cavity designs have shown better clinical performance when failure rate was considered