Interventions for treating traumatised ankylosed permanent front teeth

Raphael Freitas de Souza, Helen Travess, Tim Newton, Melissa A Marchesan

Teeth that have suffered trauma can fuse to the surrounding bone in a process called dental ankylosis. Ankylosed permanent front teeth fail to erupt during facial growth and can become displaced, thus resulting in functional and aesthetic problems. Dental ankylosis is also associated with root resorption, which may eventually lead to the loss of affected teeth. Different interventions for the management of ankylosed permanent front teeth have been described, but it is unclear which are the most effective. To evaluate the effectiveness of any intervention that can be used in the treatment of ankylosed permanent front teeth. The following electronic databases were searched: the Cochrane Oral Health Group Trials Register (to 3 August 2015), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library, 2015, Issue 7), MEDLINE via OVID (1946 to 3 August 2015), EMBASE via OVID (1980 to 3 August 2015) and LILACS via BIREME (1982 to 3 August 2015). We searched the US National Institutes of Health Trials Register (http://clinicaltrials.gov) and the WHO Clinical Trials Registry Platform for ongoing trials. No restrictions were placed on the language or date of publication when searching the electronic databases. We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) comparing any intervention for treating displaced ankylosed permanent front teeth in individuals of any age. Treatments could be compared with one another, with placebo or with no treatment. Two independent review authors screened studies independently. Full papers were obtained for potentially relevant trials. Although no study was included, the authors had planned to extract data independently and to analyse the data according to the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. No randomised controlled trials that met the inclusion criteria were identified. We were unable to identify any reports of randomised controlled trials regarding the efficacy of different treatment options for ankylosed permanent front teeth. The lack of high level evidence for the management of this health problem emphasises the need for well designed clinical trials on this topic, which conform to the CONSORT statement (www.consort-statement.org/).