Effect of conventional and self-ligating brackets on periodontal health. Systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: To compare the effect of conventional brackets and self-ligating brackets on periodontal health. Material and Methods: A search of information up to October 2022 was carried out in the following electronic databases: PubMed/MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, Scopus, Web of Science (WoS), EMBASE, SciELO and Google Scholar. We included studies that were randomised clinical trials, dealing with conventional brackets and self-ligating brackets and their effect on periodontal health, with no language restriction and no time limit. The Risk of Bias 2 (Rob 2.0) tool was used to determine the risk of bias of the included studies. The information selected from the studies was entered and analysed with RevMan 5.3, using the mean and standard deviation with a 95% confidence interval as a measure. Finally, an analysis was performed using the GRADE system to classify the quality of the evidence and grade the strength of the recommendation. Results: The preliminary search yielded a total of 399 articles, discarding those that did not meet the selection criteria, leaving only 13 articles. The effect of conventional and self-ligating brackets on periodontal health was determined using periodontal probing depth (PPD), plaque index (PI), gingival index (GI) and bleeding index (BI), showing advantages of self-ligating brackets in PI and BI, and no differences compared to self-ligating brackets in PPD and GI. Conclusions: Self-ligating brackets probably better preserve periodontal health compared to conventional brackets regarding plaque accumulation and bleeding on probing.