Bonding of restorative resins to dentine promoted by aqueous mixtures of aldehydes and active monomers.

Effective bonding between restorative resins and hard dental tissues would eliminate the need for retentive undercuts and prevent the formation of marginal gaps. While bonding to enamel has found a satisfactory solution with the advent of the acid etch technique, bonding to dentine has been more elusive. Restorative resins may bond to dentine through mechanisms involving either the inorganic or the organic constituents of the dentine. In the present work the possibility of bonding to the organic part of dentine was investigated. Since the water present in the surface of moist dentine may impede bonding, the research was focused on adhesives that are operational in aqueous environments. Aqueous mixtures of aldehydes and certain active monomers constitute such adhesives. The strength of the bond between a restorative resin and dentine was measured using the mixtures as intermediaries. To remove the smear layer the dentine was pretreated with 0.5 M EDTA, pH = 7.4. Among the aliphatic aldehydes especially propionic aldehyde and glutaraldehyde were found to be effective. Aromatic aldehydes resulted in bonds of low strength. Among the monomers investigated HEMA (hydroxyethyl-methacrylate) gave rise to the bond of highest strength. Using an adhesive based on HEMA and propionic aldehyde or HEMA and glutaraldehyde bond strengths of 15 and 18 MN/m2, respectively, were obtained. The latter adhesive significantly reduced the width of the polymerization contraction gaps between resin and dentine.