Suitability of ART approach for managing caries lesions in people with disability-Experts' opinion

This study aimed to obtain the opinions of experts in Special Care Dentistry (SCD) regarding the suitability of the Atraumatic Restorative Treatment (ART) approach for the treatment of carious lesions in persons with disability.

Thirty expert participants from around the world, joining the SCD Task Force meeting, Education Committee of the International Association of Disability and Oral Health (Antalya, Turkey, 2011), completed a questionnaire survey. Frequency distributions of variables were analysed using Chi-Square test for differences between variables.

All respondents reported having full or moderate knowledge of ART (23.3% and 63.3%, respectively) and 66.7% indicated that they felt the technique was useful for this population. However, only 50% of respondents used the technique regularly in their practice and five (16.7%) replied that they would never use it, even if a favourable evidence base for ART use in this population became available. The barriers to the introduction of ART to SCD are discussed and the need for training and further research highlighted.

Barriers to the implementation of ART in practice were placement of the restoration under difficult conditions and the dentist's pre-conception of the technique as being 'lower quality dentistry'. Experts suggested that some of these barriers might be overcome by improving the evidence base in favour of the technique, specifically in the population with disability.