Methods of clinical evaluation of dental restorative materials

The following review of the literature considers various clinical methods for evaluating dental materials. The first section looks at studies that have considered the general handling properties of dental materials in clinical practice (the pragmatic trial). The second section considers studies that have used retrospective evaluation to arrive at conclusions about the longevity of various dental materials (the observational trial). The third section considers the various methods of assessing the quality of restorations in clinical trials (the explanatory trial).