Quality of dental restorations

A major undertaking for general practitioners is the provision and assessment of dental restorations. High quality restorative therapy encompasses several key elements that fulfil specific criteria. Enhanced knowledge of these elements is a significant step toward improvement of the quality of restorative dental care 1. Several studies have demonstrated that a major component of a dentist’s work is re-restoration of previously restored teeth. Collectively this represents a worldwide billion-dollar industry 2. Estimates of annual expenditures for ‘replace-ment dentistry’ are US$5000m (USA, 1984) 3 , NLG600m (Nether-lands, 1988) 4 , and GB£100m in the public sector alone in UK in 1991 5. Quality of dental restorations encompasses wide-ranging clinical considerations, which are reflected by many strategies used to explore the issue. Such strategies include appraisals of criteria for quality or causes of failures of restorations 6,7 , health gains through improvement of clinical practice 8 , standards of dental care and practice 9–11 , and methods for evaluating restoration performance 12 .