Clinical Outcome and Comparison of Regenerative and Apexification Intervention in Young Immature Necrotic Teeth—A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

This systematic review aimed to evaluate interventions individually and compare the clinical outcome of young, immature teeth treated with regenerative endodontic therapy (RET) and apexification procedure. The protocol was registered with PROSPERO (International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews), bearing the registration number CRD42021230284. A bibliographic search in the biomedical databases was conducted in four databases—PubMed, CENTRAL, EMBASE and ProQuest—using searching keywords and was limited to studies published between January 2000 and April 2022 in English. The search was supplemented by manual searching, citation screening and scanning of all reference lists of selected paper. The study selection criteria were randomized clinical trial, prospective clinical studies and observational studies. The search found 32 eligible articles, which were included in the study. The quality assessment of the studies was performed using the Cochrane risk of bias tool for randomized control trials and non-randomized clinical studies. The meta-analysis was performed using Review Manager software (REVMAN, version 5). The results indicated that a clinicians’ MTA apexification procedure was more successful compared to calcium hydroxide. In RET, apical closure and overall success rate is statistically same for both apical platelet concentrates (APCs) and blood clots (BC). Both interventions have similar survival rates; however, RET should be preferred in cases where the root development is severely deficient, there is insufficient dentine and the tooth’s prognosis is hopeless even with an apexification procedure.