Effectiveness of ART and Conventional Treatment - Practice-based Clinical Trial

Background: Dental caries is still a public health problem among Brazilian children and doubts still exist regarding the most effective restorative technique. The aim of this pragmatic randomized clinical trial is to evaluate the effectiveness of single and multiple-surfaces restorations performed following the Atraumatic Restorative Treatment (ART) premises compared with Conventional Treatment (CT) in primary and permanent teeth. Methods: A total of 1,214 5-to-13 years-old children with at least one single or multiple-surface dentin caries lesion in primary or permanent molars will be selected in the public schools of Barueri-SP. The participants will be randomly divided into 2 groups: CT (Filtek Bulk Fill - 3M) and ART (Ketac Molar Easy Mix - 3M) and treated by ten untrained dentists in a dental office inside the schools. The restorations will be evaluated after 6, 12 and 24 months by an independent trained and calibrated examiner. The restoration and tooth survival, the cost-effectiveness analysis between the two groups and the operator preference of the treatment regarding the techniques will be also evaluated. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and log-rank test will be applied to the survival of restorations. All the average event rates in the two groups will be modelled and compared with a Cox proportional hazard shared frailty model since there is an operator cluster-effect. The significance level for all analyses will be 5%.