Comparing Laboratory Practice with Clinical Realities of Dental Light Curing

Method: 100 published RBC research papers, identified via PubMed, from 2010-2012 were examined. The papers were concerned with a wide range of property and performance studies. Papers that reported the E_D to light-cure RBCs prior to subsequent evaluations were identified.  The reported E_D  was then compared to: (i) the MMER for the RBC, and (ii) the E_D by a group of 11 practicing dentists who use a RBC with the same MMER.  The clinical E_D of these dentists was assessed using a MARC® Patient Simulator (BlueLight analytics, Halifax, Canada) which uses embedded sensors and a calibrated spectrometer to measure the E_D when the clinicians repeated (n=6) simulated photo-curing with 5 generic LCUs.

Result: Light energy delivery was quantified in 54/100 papers.  For 3 papers, E_D ranged from 21-98 % of the MMER. A majority of RBC specimens received multiples of the MMER.

Conversely, intra-oral E_D by the set of clinicians ranged overall between 0.5 to 30.5  J.cm^-2 (6–381 % of MMER). However 7/11 dentists had  E_D<Conclusion: In the set of in vitro studies evaluated, the majority trend was to photo-cure with energy-delivery far in excess of MMER.  By contrast, the clinical energy-delivery examined tended towards far less than the MMER. As previous research has shown the manifold deleterious effects of undercuring, the present in vitro studies highlight the best that can be achieved by photo-curing rather than corresponding to the outcomes of clinical undercuring.