Influence of root fillings on direct and indirect restoration survival

A database of patients with direct and indirect restorations placed in the General Dental Services (GDS) in England and Wales was established using dentist payment data at the Dental Practice Board, Eastbourne in 1991. All subsequent treatment on those patients was recorded until 2002. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to compare the survival of restorations placed in root filled and non root filled teeth. Methods: For each patient on the database with a tooth restored with a direct or indirect restoration with or without a root filling, the subsequent history of intervention on that tooth was consulted, and the next date of intervention, if any could be found in the data set, was obtained. Thus a data set was created of restored teeth and whether they have also received root fillings, with the dates of restoration and root filling placement and the dates, if any, of re-intervention. Modified Kaplan-Meier statistical analysis was used to quantify the distribution of time to intervention. Results: Data for over 80,000 different adult patients were analysed, of whom 46% were male and 54% female. There were 491,404 teeth with direct restorations of the crown, of which 22,434 had root fillings. The number with indirect restorations was 47,563, of which 7,639 had root fillings. Both direct and indirect restorations on teeth without root fillings have longer survival times than restorations in root filled teeth (p<0.0001). Conclusions: Examination of the survival of restorations in teeth with and without root fillings has indicated that those with root fillings have shorter intervals to re-intervention than teeth without root fillings

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