Defective amalgam restorations--repair or replace?

Abstract

The Cochrane Oral Health Group's Trials Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Medline, Embase, BIOSIS via Web of Knowledge, Web of Science and Opengrey databases were searched. In addition researchers and experts in the field were contacted to trace unpublished or ongoing studies. No restrictions were placed on the language or date of publication. Randomised controlled trials (including split-mouth studies), involving replacement and repair of amalgam restorations in adults with a defective molar restoration in permanent molar or premolar teeth were to be considered. Two review authors independently assessed titles and abstracts for each article identified by the searches in order to decide whether the article was likely to be relevant. Full papers were obtained for relevant articles and both review authors studied these. The Cochrane Collaboration statistical guidelines were to be followed for data synthesis. The search strategy retrieved 201 potentially eligible studies after de-duplication. After examination of the titles and abstracts, full texts of the relevant studies were retrieved but none of these met the inclusion criteria of the review. There are no published randomised controlled trials relevant to this review question. There is therefore a need for methodologically sound randomised controlled trials that are reported according to the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement (www.consort-statement.org/). Further research also needs to explore qualitatively the views of patients on repairing versus replacement and investigate themes around pain, distress and anxiety, time and costs.