Objectives

To provide dental practitioners and researchers with a comprehensive and transparent evidence-based overview of physical robot initiatives in all fields of dentistry.

Data

Articles published since 1985 concerning primary data on physical robot technology in dentistry were selected. Characteristics of the papers were extracted such as the respective field of dentistry, year of publication as well as a description of its usage.

Sources

Bibliographic databases PubMed, Embase, and Scopus were searched. A hand search through reference lists of all included articles was performed.

Study selection

The search timeline was between January 1985 and October 2020. All types of scientific literature in all languages were included concerning fields of dentistry ranging from student training to implantology. Robot technology solely for the purpose of research and maxillofacial surgery were excluded. In total, 94 articles were included in this systematic review.

Conclusions

This study provides a systematic overview of initiatives using robot technology in dentistry since its very beginning. While there were many interesting robot initiatives reported, the overall quality of the literature, in terms of clinical validation, is low. Scientific evidence regarding the benefits, results and cost-efficiency of commercially available robotic solutions in dentistry is lacking. The rise in availability of open source control systems, compliant robot systems and the design of dentistry-specific robot technology might facilitate the process of technological development in the near future. The authors are confident that robotics will provide useful solutions in the future but, strongly, encourage an evidence-based approach when adapting to new (robot) technology.

中文翻译：

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牙科机器人技术，系统评价的第二部分：倡议概述

目标

为牙科医生和研究人员提供全面和透明的基于证据的关于牙科所有领域的物理机器人计划的概述。

数据

选择了自 1985 年以来发表的有关牙科物理机器人技术原始数据的文章。提取了论文的特征，例如各自的牙科领域、出版年份以及对其用途的描述。

来源

检索了书目数据库 PubMed、Embase 和 Scopus。手动搜索所有纳入文章的参考文献列表。

研究选择

搜索时间线为 1985 年 1 月至 2020 年 10 月。所有语言的所有类型科学文献都包括在牙科领域，从学生培训到种植学。仅用于研究和颌面外科的机器人技术被排除在外。本系统评价共纳入 94 篇文章。

结论

本研究系统地概述了从一开始就在牙科中使用机器人技术的举措。虽然报告了许多有趣的机器人计划，但就临床验证而言，文献的整体质量很低。缺乏关于牙科中商用机器人解决方案的益处、结果和成本效益的科学证据。在不久的将来，开源控制系统、兼容机器人系统和牙科专用机器人技术设计的可用性的增加可能会促进技术发展的进程。作者相信机器人技术将在未来提供有用的解决方案，但强烈鼓励在适应新（机器人）技术时采用循证方法。