Clinical studies on core-carrier obturation: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: This systematic review aimed to evaluate the clinical performance of core-carrier obturation in endodontic treatment. METHODS: Keywords of “(core carrier OR Thermafil) OR (cold lateral condensation OR lateral condensation) OR (warm vertical condensation OR vertical condensation) AND (obturation OR root canal filling) AND clinical study” were searched for all obtainable publications up to year 2017 in the databases of PubMed, ScienceDirect, EMBASE, Scopus and Web of Science. The success rate, short-term postoperative pain, overfilling and adaptation of core-carrier obturation from clinical studies were selected. Reviews, laboratory studies, animal studies and irrelevant reports were excluded. RESULTS: 1349 relevant articles were identified with 149 duplicated articles removed and 1173 irrelevant articles were excluded after screening. The titles and abstracts of the 19 identified articles were screened in the systematic review. The full texts of remaining articles were retrieved with data extracted for meta-analysis on the success rate, postoperative pain, overfilling and adaptation of obturation. The pooled success rate of core-carrier obturation was 83% (95% CI: 69%-91%). The pooled incidence of 1-day and 7-day short-term postoperative pain were 35% (95% CI: 15%-62%) and 6% (95% CI: 1-35%). The pooled proportion of teeth with overfilling and adequate adaptation of the obturation material were 31% (95% CI: 18%-50%) and 85% (95% CI: 75%-91%), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The success rate of endodontic treatment using core-carrier obturation was 83%. Short-term postoperative pain was not uncommon (24%). Most teeth (85%) had adequate adaptation using core-carrier obturation material, but a considerable amount of teeth (31%) had overfilling.