Objectives: To systematically review the literature on economic evaluations of dental sealants and examine the costs and effectiveness of caries prevention using sealants.Methods: Of 21 full-text articles examined, a total of 13 were included in this study. These studies are grouped by the type of intervention as follows: (i) sealants compared with no sealants; (ii) sealants compared with other forms of caries prevention; (iii) resin-based sealants compared with glass-ionomer sealants; (iv) different sealing strategies in primary teeth; (v) different sealing strategies in permanent teeth; and (vi) sealants based on school-or clinic-based setting of delivery. All currency is reported in constant 2010 US$.Results: Cost-effectiveness analyses differed due to varying study designs, assumptions, sealant delivery settings, outcomes, caries risk assessment and study durations.Findings varied on the cost-effectiveness of sealants compared with other caries-preventive strategies. Under the assumption of equal caries risk, always sealing primary molars appeared to be the most effective strategy, whereas risk-based sealing was the optimal strategy with differing caries risk. Studies that assessed sealing strategies in permanent teeth reported that risk-based sealing was more cost-effective than not sealing, but they differed on the cost-effectiveness of risk-based seal compared with non-risk-based seal. Sealants delivered in school settings had mixed results on costs but were as equally effective as sealants delivered in private practices.
Conclusions:The cost-effectiveness of sealants is dependent on the conditions of delivery. The list of cost-effectiveness ratios for each intervention can support policy makers to estimate expected returns on their investments in dental sealants. States in 2014. 5 Interventions involving the delivery of dental sealants on a large scale have been limited due to uncertainty on their cost-effectiveness, as there are concerns that treating dental decay is cheaper than using sealants. economic evaluations in dentistry means that there has been a growing number of reviews which examine the scientific literature on the cost and effectiveness of dental caries prevention programmes more generally.12,13The current study builds on this scientific literature by focusing specifically on economic evaluation of dental sealants for caries prevention. The primary objective of this study was to review the literature on costs and benefits of using dental sealants to prevent caries. 2 | ME TH ODS 2.1 | Search strategy and data collectionTo identify articles published on the economic evaluation of dental sealants, we searched PubMed, MEDLINE (via EBSCOhost) and CINAHL (via EBSCOhost) databases using search terms such as "dental sealants," "pit and fissure sealants," "cost," "cost analysis,""cost-benefit analysis," "cost allocation," "direct service costs" and "economics" (see Table 1 for complete search terms). Only English language articles published in peer-reviewed journals from 1996 through Octob...