| Abstrakt: |
Aims and Objectives: This in vitro study is designed to evaluate the effect of four mouth rinses on the microhardness of esthetic restorative material. Materials and Methods: Forty specimens of resin composite (Filtek™ P60) material (3M ESPE St. Paul, MN, USA) with 3 mm diameter and 3 mm height were prepared using a plastic mold. The baseline microhardness values of the specimens were recorded using Vickers microhardness tester. The specimens were randomly allocated into four groups, each containing ten specimens as follows - Group I Listerine® (Johnson & Johnson), Group II Colgate Plax®, Group III Freshclor® (Group Pharmaceuticals), and Group IV AloeDent® (Optima, Bradford-Italy). The pH of all mouth rinses was recorded. Then, the specimens were immersed in 20 ml of respective mouth rinses and kept in an incubator at 37°C for 24 h. The change in the microhardness values of the specimens was recorded. The obtained result was subjected to statistical analysis using Wilcoxon signed rank, Kruskal--Wallis, and Mann--Whitney U-tests. SPSS software version 16 and Microsoft Excel version 7 were also used. The level of significance was set at P = 0.05. Results: There was reduction in the microhardness of all the specimens irrespective of the mouthwashes. Group I (Listerine®) showed significant reduction in the microhardness compared to Group II (Colgate Plax®), Group III (Freshclor®), and Group IV (AloeDent®), whereas there was no statistically significant difference between Group III and Group IV. Conclusion: All the mouth rinses showed reduction in surface hardness of the esthetic restorative material. High reduction of surface hardness was shown in Listerine® mouth rinse. There was no statistically significant difference between Freshclor® and AloeDent® mouth rinses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
