Analysis of amalgam restorations done in class 1 cavities in a private dental college - A retrospective study

Abstract

Amalgam is a very special type of alloy in which mercury is one of the components. It is a material of choice for dental restorations. There are various intriguing facts about dental amalgam that stand out from other materials—the dimensional changes of dental amalgam cause it to undergo initial contraction, expansion and delayed contraction. However, the usage is becoming lesser as the implementation of the dental composite material was introduced. Amalgam is usually indicated when aesthetics is of no concern and where occlusal contact is high. Mercury toxicity is the property which is considered negative as there have been debates and discussions of the hazards mercury can bring to health. There have been advancements in the dental amalgam to help improve its usage among restorative materials. Data collection was done in a university setting. One thousand cases were reviewed from the time period of June 2019 to March 2020. Excel tabulation and SPSS version 22 was used for data analysis. Chi-square test was used for the analysis of the data. There was no statistical significance between the variables that included types of base and the tooth number. (P-value>0.05). Zinc phosphate was the most commonly used base material in relation to lower molars, (p-value<0.05) which was statistically significant. The maximum number of amalgam capsules used were one capsule which showed high significance.