Atraumatic restorative treatment – a possible option for temporary teeth?

Objectives. Atraumatic restorative treatment (ART) is a restorative and preventive concept for carious lesions approach. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the durability of ART restorations on temporary molars. Material and method. ART was applied to a group of 64 children aged 4-7 years, with a total number of 112 class I and II carious lesions, located on temporary molars, restored. The material used for coronary restorations by ART technique was Fuji IX glass-ionomer cement (GC Corporation, Tokyo, Japan). Each restoration was evaluated after 6 and 12 months respectively, by code assignment, from 0 to 6. The obtained data were statistically processed using SPSS Version 20.0 (IBM, Chicago, Ill, USA). Results were considered statistically significant for p < 0.05. Results. The 6-month evaluation revealed a high number of scores 0 and 1, without significant differences between them (p > 0.05). Assessment after 12 month revealed a reduction of scores 0 with statistically significant differences in favor of score 1 (p < 0.05). Comparison of the scores of restorations at 6 and 12 months revealed statistically significant differences for score 0 (p < 0.05). Conclusions. The high number of clinically acceptable restorations (scores 0 and 1) underlines the potential of ART to provide for children with an increased degree of anxiety, who have active caries, the treatment of dental lesions.