Alveolar ridge preservation: an overview of systematic reviews

The aim of this overview was to assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews of randomized clinical trials on alveolar ridge preservation after a tooth extraction. During March 2020, two independent reviewers performed an electronic search of the PubMed (MEDLINE), Scopus, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library databases to identify all relevant systematic reviews including randomized clinical trials on alveolar ridge preservation. A manual search of articles in renowned journals was also conducted. The methodological quality of the included reviews was determined using the AMSTAR-2 tool. From the 53 initially retrieved studies, 11 were finally included: three systematic reviews and eight systematic reviews with meta-analyses. The methodological quality of the included reviews was low or critically low. Higher quality clinical studies should be conducted prior to performing further reviews and these should meet the methodological requirements that are fundamental to this type of research.