The impact of sealer extrusion on endodontic outcome: A systematic review with meta-analysis

The purpose of this systematic review was to qualify and quantify the evidence regarding the effect of extruded sealers on endodontic treatment outcomes. Two reviewers independently conducted a comprehensive literature search. The EMBASE, MEDLINE, Cochrane, PubMed databases, bibliographies, grey literature of all relevant articles and textbooks were searched. Six articles met the inclusion criteria with a moderate risk of bias and were analysed for qualitative and quantitative synthesis. There was moderate-certainty evidence that sealer extrusion can contribute to non-healing outcomes, 95% confidence interval, risk ratio 1.32 (1.12-1.54) and P < 0.05. This indicates that the current authors are somewhat confident the true effect is likely to be close to the estimate of the effect. Sealer extrusion had a 32% higher risk of contributing to a non-healing outcome than no extrusion. However, well-conducted research would need to be conducted to confirm this causality claim.