Method: The Study was approved by Loma Linda University IRB. Eighty (80) Subjects, healthy subjects, between the ages of 18 to 70 with average ≥A3 Vita Classical shade (VCS; Bad Säckingen, Germany) on 6 maxillary anterior teeth, were enrolled from the local area in California. There were 46 males and 34 females. The average age was 55.29 years. Ethnicity distribution among the participants were 61.3% White, 15.0% Hispanic, 8.8% African-American, 8.8% Asian, and 6.1% others. The subjects with presence of orthodontic appliances, cavities, or any maxillary anterior teeth with a prosthetic crown or veneer were excluded from the study. Tooth shade was determined at the baseline (BL) and post-cleaning (PC) using the VCS and Vita Bleachedguide 3D-Master interpolated (VBGi; Bad Säckingen, Germany); tooth lightness L* was measured with Vita Easyshade Compact (VES; Bad Säckingen, Germany). After BL measurements, all subjects received a professionally administered supragingival dental prophylaxis for the maxillary anterior teeth. Extreme care was given not to cause gingival bleeding while rendering cleaning. The data were analyzed using Mann-Whitney U test and Paired Samples T-test. A level of significance of p = 0.05 was employed in all tests.
Result: BL and PC shade scores for VCS and VBGi were 10.52±2.52 and 10.47±2.51, and 18.52±2.65 18.43±5.93, respectively. For VES, the BL and PC shade scores 76.15±6.79 and 76.23±7.01. Adjusted mean shade reduction and improvement lightness at PC compared to BL were minimal (-0.05 for VCS; p=0.738, -0.09 for VBG; p=0.677, and +0.08 for VES; p=0.876).
Conclusion: Supragingival dental prophylaxis has a minimal impact on the shade of maxillary anterior teeth.