Evaluation of A traumatic Restorative Treatment in Class I Cavities.

Introduction: A traumatic Restorative Treatment (ART) is a technique following the concept of minimal intervention by using only hand instruments and glass ionomer cement as a restorative material. Objectives: The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of ART by assessing the longevity of fillings placed in class I cavities under field conditions. Methods: a total of 400 school children with the mean age of 15 were examined. The prevalence of dental caries was found to be 74.8% and the DMFT index was 1. A total of hundred ART fillings were inserted in ninety-five of the subjects, who had class I cavities in their first and second molars. The subjects were asked if the felt pain during the procedure and 90% answered negatively. Results: After three months restorations were evaluated using the ART evaluation criteria and the success rate was 100%, while after six months evaluation period, a dropout of 4% was reported, and a success rate of 98.9% was achieved. Conclusions: it can be concluded that ART technique is a promising caries treatment procedure for use in rural and sub-urban areas in less industrialized countries. Studies of longer duration are needed to confirm this finding.