Does selective caries removal in combination with antimicrobial photodynamic therapy affect the clinical performance of adhesive restorations of primary or permanent teeth? A systematic review with meta-analysis

Antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) is an adjunct to a selective caries removal (SCR) technique for deep caries lesion treatment. The knowledge about chemical and structural changes affecting the remaining dentin surface after the use of this therapy is still unknown. Objective: to answer the following question: Does the SCR technique in combination with aPDT affect the clinical performance of adhesive restorations in deep carious lesions of primary or permanent teeth? Study design: a systematic review was conducted. Five databases, supplemented by trial registers, google scholar, manual search, personal communications, and grey literature were investigated. Randomized clinical trials were included. Two independent reviewers selected the studies, extracted qualitatively the data, and evaluated the risk of bias (using Cochrane Collaboration's tooland Robot Reviewer program). The certainty of the evidence was accessed based on The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach. A meta-analysis of comparable data was performed with RevMan software 5.3. Results: A total of 39 articles and 3 studies were found. The final selection included 3 articles with a total of 82 participants. No studies were found on permanent teeth. The studies presented low risk of bias. Considering the treatment in the experimental (SCR + aPDT) or control groups (SCR), no difference on clinical performance of adhesive restorations in deep caries of primary teeth was observed after 6 months (p = 0.78; CI -0.01 (-0.09, 0.07)) or 12 months (p =0.75; CI -0.02 (-0.12, 0.08)). All outcomes presented moderate certainty of evidence mainly due to the small sample size that downgrade the GRADE scores. Conclusions: based on moderate certainty of the evidence, the clinical use of aPDT as an adjuvant of SCR has potential indication for treatment in deep caries of primary teeth. However, studies with more follow up and on permanent teeth are missing with the necessity for further research.