Flexibility of Resin Splint Systems for Traumatized Teeth: In Vitro

Objectives: The aim of this study is to evaluate the flexibility of different resin splint systems in comparison with resin wire splint system.
Methods: A ready-made artificial model with resin teeth was used. Three type of resin splint systems were evaluated in comparison with the conventional resin wire system(orthodontic 016 SS wire). We evaluated three types of resin splint systems(G-aenial flow, G-fix, Superbond) and resin wire splint system. The left central incisor simulated ‘injured teeth’ with third degree mobility. The right central incisor and left lateral incisor served as ‘uninjured teeth’ with mimicked physiological mobility. Three consecutively repeated measurements were taken in horizontal direction, before and after splinting, using the Periotest method to access tooth mobility. The splinting effect was calculated through the Periotest value. Normal distribution was tested with Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Differences were evaluated through One-way Anova and Tukey HDS post-hoc tests for pair-wise comparison(p = .05).
Results: There was a splint effect for all injured teeth on all splint systems in the horizontal direction Periotest method(G-aenial flow = 95.3%, G-Fix = 95.9%, Superbond = 96.2%, Resin wire splint = 31.2%). In the treatment of tooth avulsion, three resin splint systems produced significantly higher and rigid splinting effect compared with 016“ resin-wire splint system(p < .05)
Conclusions: According to the current guidelines and within the limits of an in vitro study, it can be stated that resin splint systems are too rigid and may not be acceptable to treat tooth avulsion.