Silver amalgam: A clinician's perspective

Caries persists throughout the world, and patients have multiple restorations that are likely to need replacement throughout the remainder of their lives. The selection of the best restorative material that can be used in the oral cavity is a challenging job for both the dentist and the manufacturer. While material properties and clinical performance are critically important, local economies, health care systems, will be important determinants of whether and where new materials can be easily adopted. Challenges exist not only in specifying how the material should be manipulated and perform clinically but also in understanding and incorporating implications of the skill of the operator placing the restoration. Many restorative materials currently exist like amalgam, composites, glass ionomers, and resin ionomers. It is important that the dentist must make the selection of the material with great care because, in future years, those restorations needing replacement will result in the loss of increasing amounts of tooth structure. Amalgam has a lot of disadvantages such as lack of adhesion, toxicity, poor esthetics, and marginal leakage; however, the advantages score better over other materials.