Clinical success of infiltrant and resin sealant on incipient caries of permanent teeth: an integrative review of literature

Abstract

Objective: To perform an integrative literature review, presenting techniques to seal incipient caries, their advantages, indications and failures, and comparing their clinical success. Methods: The guiding question for this literature review was: What technique, sealant or resin infiltration, provides longer clinical longevity in sealing incipient caries lesions in permanent teeth? 1707 scientific articles published from 2005 to 2019 were searched in the PubMed, LILACS and SciELO databases, using the following keywords: “caries sealing”, “resinous infiltrant,” and “caries progression”. After their titles and abstracts were read, 10 papers were selected according to the inclusion criteria: papers written in the English language, randomized clinical control trials lasting at least one year, and techniques using infiltration sealing or resin sealant as the treatment method of active carious lesions in occlusal and proximal surfaces of permanent teeth with involvement up to the outer layer of dentin. The Mann-Whitney statistical test was used to compare the techniques (alpha=0.05). Results: Six studies used a split mouth design, and 4 studies had a parallel design, for a total sample of 1316 teeth. The studies achieved a high rate of clinical success in controlling carious lesion progression, with an average rate of 80% for the sealant, and 88% for the infiltrant, and with no statistical difference between the techniques (p-value=0.358). Conclusions: No difference in the clinical efficacy was observed between the resinous sealing and infiltrative resin techniques of incipient lesions in permanent teeth in one to seven years of follow-up.