As patients increasingly move away from amalgam restorations in their posterior teeth, with the added impetus of the Minamata Agreement by which the use of amalgam has been banned, from 1st July 2018, in children 15 years and younger and pregnant and nursing women, dental practitioners have had to use an alternative material, the most appropriate of which is resin composite. In this regard, practicebased clinical evaluations of this material have indicated positive results.
However, in order to obtain such results, along with the resin composite material, a variety of materials and devices must be employed, for example, a dentine-bonding agent, a suitable matrix system and a polishing system. For the first time, to the PREP Panel’ knowledge, all of these have been marketed as a single system, the Dentsply Sirona Class II Solution system.
It was therefore the aim of this study to evaluate the opinions of a group of practice-based researchers, the PREP Panel, of the components of this system, and the system as a whole. The Dentsply Sirona products under evaluation were: the dentine bonding system Prime & Bond Active™, the Palodent V3 Sectional Matrix System, SDR® Flow+ composite, Ceram.x Universal composite and the Enhance® Finishing and Polishing System. A copy of the PREP Panel study, produced in association with Dental Update (published 14th December, 2018) is available to download.
Dentsply Sirona Comments
Dentsply Sirona would like to thank the members of the PREP Panel in evaluating and sharing the feedback around our recently introduced Class II Solution system. The company is pleased with the responses received and believe that the findings of the study support their commitment to delivering better, safer, faster dentistry to clinicians. It is also worth pointing out, given the positive reception for ceram.X Universal that, on 1st December 2018, ceram.x Universal composite will be re-branded to Ceram.x Spectra™ ST composite − High Viscosity (HV). Each product in the Ceram.x Spectra™ ST Composite portfolio will continue to utilise Dentsply Sirona’s novel SphereTEC filler technology to deliver optimised performance in the areas that matter most to dentists.
About the PREP Panel and Practice-based Research
The value of practicebased research has been previously discussed, with the arena of general dental practice having been considered the ideal environment in which to carry out evaluations of the handling of dental materials and their clinical effectiveness. In this regard, a wide variety of research projects may be considered to be appropriate to general dental practice, including assessment of materials, devices and techniques, clinical trials of materials, assessment of treatment trends and patient satisfaction with treatment.
A UK-based group of practice-based researchers is the PREP (Product Research and Evaluation by Practitioners) Panel. This group was established in 1993 with six general dental practitioners (GDPs), and has grown to contain 31 dental practitioners located across the UK, with one in mainland Europe. The group has completed over 70 projects – ‘handling’ evaluations of materials and techniques, and, more recently, clinical evaluations (n = 8) of restorations placed under general dental practice conditions, with the restorations being followed for up to five years.
Study authors: FJ Trevor Burke, Russell J Crisp and Dr Peter Sands
