Material evaluation

Since the majority of dental treatment, worldwide, is carried out in general dental practice, there is a strong argument to suggest that this is where clinical evaluations of the survival of restorations should be carried out. This has now been recognised by the International Association for Dental Research by the establishment of a Primary Dental Care research network.

The PREP (Product Research and Evaluation by Practitioners) Panel was founded in 1993, when it was realised that a group of dentists, rather than only one, would provide a more objective evaluation of the handling of a given dental material. Accordingly, the group was established with six general dental practitioners, and has grown to contain 32 dental practitioners located across the UK, with one in mainland Europe. It started life carrying out ‘handling’ evaluations of materials, devices and techniques, but it was soon realised that it would also be appropriate to carry out scientifically-based clinical evaluations of the survival of materials in the practice patient population, of which more than 10 have been completed.