Article
As readers are increasingly ditching (pardon the pun!) amalgam, as I did over 20 years ago, in favour of resin composite in posterior teeth, some may ask themselves, why did we stick with it for so long? Daresay some of the answers are found in Louis Mackenzie' s superb article on dental amalgam published 2 years ago, which may well go down in history as the last major review on this material.1 In this, he published a table with 19 advantages relating to dental amalgam. These included relatively ‘quick and easy to use, compared with direct adhesive procedures’, ‘optimal use can provide restorations lasting 30 years’, ‘suitable for use in posterior teeth where aesthetic demands are low’, and, ‘comparatively inexpensive’. But, the overriding property is its ease of use, and the fact that the clinician does not need to carry out an intermediate bonding procedure, given that the margins of amalgam restorations corrode, thereby creating a marginal seal of sorts.1
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