Intraoral Repair of Dental Restorations with Resin Composite

Dental restorations suffer deterioration and degradation over time due to undesirable conditions; accordingly, their clinical life is reduced. The complete removal of defective dental restoration can lead to progressive cavity enlargement with unnecessary sound tooth tissue removal and weakening of the remaining dental tissue, which can lead to complicated treatment procedures, loss of vitality of the tooth, and result in an economic disadvantage. The repair approach, which provides the advantage of preserving a sound tooth structure by keeping tissue loss to a minimum level, has become an alternative to the replacement process. Today, there is not a clear consensus on selecting the appropriate treatment method from between the repair or replacement procedures. This review aims to provide information about the procedures to be applied when the repair approach is to be carried out, surface treatment methods and some of the results of studies on this subject which were carried out within the last 5 years.