Effect of multicolored versus conventional restorations on children’s dental anxiety and behavior: A systematic review

Restorative dental care may be an unpleasant procedure for children because it involves several potentially stressful stimuli, each contributing to dental anxiety (DA). One way of motivating them is to use multicolored restorations. The aim of this study was to analyze the scientific literature evidence by comparing the effect of multicolored versus conventional restorations on children’s DA and behavior. A literature search was confined to the English language using Medical Subject Headings terms conferring to populations, interventions, comparisons, and outcomes format in PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Ovid without restriction to study publication time. A search in Google Scholar, Grey literature, and hand search on references was performed to include additional data. Suitable studies were selected based on the predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Quality analysis was performed using the Cochrane risk assessment tool for randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Out of 568 articles, four RCTs were included for the final analysis. Among these, two articles evaluated both anxiety and behavior, one evaluated anxiety, and one evaluated behavior. Quality analysis showed one study as fair quality and three as poor quality. Based on the available evidence, it is difficult to determine the effect of multicolored restoration on DA and behavior. Due to the scarcity of literature on good quality RCTs, more good quality studies are recommended to affirm the significance of multicolored over conventional restorations on children’s anxiety and behavior.