Long-Term Treatment Success Rate after Stepwise Caries Removal: A Registry Study

The objective of this study was to investigate the treatment success rate of teeth treated with stepwise caries removal procedure (SWP) using SKaPa registry data.

Study design was a retrospective analysis of longitudinal SKaPa database data. SWP treated teeth with a minimum of one follow-up visit was included (January 1, 2013-April 1, 2022). Teeth that had not been treated endodontically or extracted during the follow-up period was considered successful. The Kaplan-Meier survival analysis (p < 0.01) in combination with descriptive statistics was used for statistics.

A total of 111,771 teeth were included (50.7% women; 49.3% men). The most frequent tooth group was molars (71.5%). The results demonstrate a treatment success rate of over 60% after 110 months for teeth with deep caries lesions treated with SWP. Age was a statistically significant variable (p = 0.00) with increased survival rate for younger age-groups.

Although SWP is performed on teeth with poor prognoses, the overall treatment success rate is over 60% after 9 years. Age, tooth group, localization, and caries risk are factors that could affect the outcome after SWP, with an improved prognosis for premolars, subjects under 40 years of age, and subjects with low or medium caries risk.