Enamel bevelling and retention of composite restorations in non-carious cervical lesions

Data sourcesMedline, Web of Science, Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature database (LILACS), Brazilian Library in Dentistry (BBO), the Cochrane Library, abstracts of the annual conference of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR), System for Information on Grey literature in Europe (SIGLE), ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Fulltext database as well as the Periódicos Capes Theses, Current Controlled Trials, International Clinical trials registry platform, the ClinicalTrials.gov, Rebec and the EU Clinical Trials Register.Study selectionRandomised clinical trials (RCTs) that compared the retention rates of restorations in NCCLs placed with or without bevel with at least one year follow-up were considered.Data extraction and synthesisData were abstracted using standardised forms and study quality was assessed using the Cochrane risk of bias tool. Marginal discolouration scores were dichotomised into yes and no, and risk differences for retention rate and marginal discolouration were calculated for each study for analysis.ResultsFour studies were included. Two studies were considered to be at high risk of bias and not included in the meta-analysis. The overall risk difference was 0.0 (95%CI; 0.04 to 0.04) for the retention rate and 0.05 ((95%CI; 0.02 to 0.13) for the marginal discolouration, suggesting that enamel beveling does not influence retention rate or marginal discolouration.ConclusionsOne may conclude that there is no difference between bevelled and non-bevelled technique over the short-term follow-up of 12-18 months of clinical service, although this conclusion was based on only two low risk of bias RCTs. Additionally, there is not enough evidence to support this conclusion over longer-term follow-ups. There is a need for better standardisation and the reporting of RCTs investigating this technique variation after longer-term follow-up periods.