Lasers have recently been introduced as an alternative means of conditioning dental
ceramic surfaces in order to enhance their adhesive strength to cements and other materials.
The present systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to review and quantitatively
analyze the available literature in order to determine which bond protocols and laser types
are the most effective.
A search was conducted in the Pubmed, Embase and Scopus databases for papers published
up to April 2017. PRISMA guidelines for systematic review and meta-analysis were
followed.
Fifty-two papers were eligible for inclusion in the review. Twenty-five studies were synthesized
quantitatively. Lasers were found to increase bond strength of ceramic surfaces to resin
cements and composites when compared with control specimens (p-value < 0.01), whereas
no significant differences were found in comparison with air-particle abraded surfaces.
High variability can be observed in adhesion values between different analyses, pointing
to a need to standardize study protocols and to determine the optimal parameters for each
laser type