Slightly more than half of restored teeth in the U.S. contained amalgam as of 2015 and 2016, according to a study from the American Dental Association Science & Research Institute.
Published online in May by the Journal of Public Health Dentistry, “Dental Amalgam Restorations in Nationally Representative Sample of U.S. Population Aged ≥15 Years: NHANES 2011-2016” analyzed three two-year cycles of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data from U.S. participants who were at least 15 years old and underwent an oral health examination. The percent of the U.S. population with at least one restoration of any material was relatively constant throughout 2011-16, ranging from 64.4% to 67.1%. In the 2015-16 cycle, the data included the type of material used for restorations, indicating 51.5% of restored teeth contained amalgam — the first-ever estimate of amalgam-restored teeth in the U.S.
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