Repair strength and roughness of resin matrix ceramic pretreated with rose bengal activated low level laser therapy and Er, Cr: YSGG bonded to different viscosity composites.

AIM

Assessment of the effectiveness of various pre-treatment techniques, i.e., Airborne particle abrasion (APA), Er, Cr: YSGG lasers (ECL), Rose Bengal (RB) activated via Low-level laser therapy (LLLT) on the repair bond strength (RBS) of resin matrix ceramics (RMC) bonded with different viscosity composites.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

RMC blocks were meticulously cut into 78 discs. All the discs were then randomly assigned to three separate groups based on the conditioning regime(n = 26): Group 1 (APA), Group 2 (ECL), and Group 3 (LLLT-RB). Five samples from each category were selected at random to assess Ra(n = 5). One prepared sample from each group underwent surface topography analysis and energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) (n = 1). Each group was further categorized into two subgroups based on the type of composite resin used(n = 10). High viscosity micro-hybrid composite (A) and a low viscosity injectable composite (B) followed by artificial aging. RBS and failure mode were analyzed using a universal testing machine and stereomicroscope. The Ra and RBS data underwent comparison through a two-way ANOVA and post hoc Tukey test (p˂0.05).

RESULTS

The maximum Ra was exhibited by Group 2 (ECL) (1056.65 ± 0.029 µm) discs. Conversely, Group 3 (LLLT-RB) (753.31 ± 0.045 µm) conditioned samples demonstrated the minimum Ra. The highest bond strength score was recorded by Group 2B (ECL + Injectable) (10.63±0.19 MPa). In contrast, the lowest average bond strength value was noted in Group 3A (LLLT-RB + Microhybrid) (7.99±0.77 MPa).

CONCLUSION

ECL has the potential to serve as a hybrid ceramic surface conditioner, as it improves the surface roughness scores. Furthermore, low-viscosity injectable composites showed better performance than high-viscosity composites in achieving higher bond strength.