Introduction:

universal adhesives have been developed to satisfy the demand with faster adhesive procedures, less sensitive to the technique and ease of use, which offer the professional the option of selecting the adhesion strategy with different etching modes, either with etch-and-rinse, self-etch or selective etching ones. Doubts have been generated about the performance, properties and application of an adequate adhesive technique on dental tissues due to the little existing information.

Objective:

to determine the level of adhesion with the use of universal adhesives in etch-and-rinse and self-etch modes

Methods:

an electronic search of the literature was carried out in SciELO, Scopus, PubMed, Springer and EBSCO databases. Initially, articles were selected by title and abstract, duplicate ones were considered only once, free and paid access articles, written in Spanish and English and published since 2015 were included; 39 of them were selected for the study.

Conclusions:

the use of universal adhesives on dentin presents a higher level of adhesion when applied in self-etch mode. The active application of the universal adhesive improves the enamel bond strength. The level of adhesion on the enamel is higher when applied in etch-and-rinse. The initial fatigue resistance of the adhesive does not improve with prolonged acid etching times.