Pain related to different ways of minimal intervention in the treatment of small caries lesions

Abstract

Pain during invasive treatment of dental caries is a common phenomenon, if no local analgesia has been used before cavity preparation. Atraumatic restorative technique (ART) is a suggested procedure which is at least less traumatic for the patient. Although the ART approach has been received well by both children and adults who belong to population groups hardly ever exposed to regular oral health care, it has not yet been proven that this particular procedure really causes less pain, compared to more conventional techniques with rotating instruments. In the present study, pain was reported in connection with tooth restoration in 19.3 percent of the cases, when the ART technique was used, which is significantly less than with a conventional restorative technique (35.7 percent). Finally the results show a clear relationship in the pain reports between the first and the following treatments in both ART and the conventional technique groups.