Comparisons of the effectiveness of pliers with narrow and wide blades in debonding ceramic brackets.

The removal of most ceramic brackets is accomplished by specially designed pliers that apply some form of tensile or shear force to the tooth surface. While the shear and tensile bond strengths for ceramic brackets in vitro have been reported, a simulation of the actual force application when using sharp-edged debonding pliers to debond a bracket has not. The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness and the force levels generated by the use of both the wide and the narrow blades in the debonding of ceramic brackets. The present findings indicate that the narrow blades effectively debonded ceramic brackets with a significantly lower mean debonding force (120 kg/cm2) than the wider blades (150 kg/cm2). The surface area of the blade in contact with the bracket-adhesive interface is less for the narrow blade (2.0 mm) than for the wide blade (3.2 mm). This relatively smaller contact area is sufficient to debond a bracket at a significantly lower debonding force.