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

Abstract 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.