Prevalence of Apical Periodontitis and Conventional Nonsurgical Root Canal Treatment in General Adult Population: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Cross-sectional Studies Published between 2012 and 2020

Introduction: This study aimed to summarize data on apical periodontitis (AP) and nonsurgical root canal treatment (NSRCT) prevalence and risk factors related to age, gender, and quality of restorative and endodontic treatment in the general population from cross-sectional studies published between 2012 and 2020.

Methods: An electronic search was performed in the following databases: Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed. The conducted literature search covered studies published between 2012 and 2020, without restrictions on language. The STROBE and NOS tools were used for quality assessment of the included studies.

Results: Sixteen articles were included in the review. In total, 200,041 teeth were examined. On average, 6.3% of teeth had AP, and 7.4% had NSRCT. Forty-one percent of RCT teeth had AP, and 3.5% of untreated teeth had AP. Female patients were less prone to AP in endodontically treated teeth only, compared with male patients (P < .001). Variable stratification of age subgroups among included studies prevented us from conducting a meta-analysis. An increase in AP frequency was found in teeth with inadequate restorative and endodontic treatment (P < .001 and P < .001, respectively). Because of high heterogeneity, these results should be taken with caution.

Conclusions: There is an increased AP prevalence in the adult general population compared with data from 2012 (6.3% versus 5.4%) in both endodontically treated (41.3% versus 35.9%) and untreated teeth (3.5% versus 2.1%). In addition, AP developed less frequently in female patients with endodontically treated teeth and in teeth with inadequate compared with adequate restorative and endodontic treatment.