Effects of different finishing and polishing procedures on color of a novel hybrid ceramic material

Objectives: Hybrid ceramic materials appear to be promising for single crowns, implant supported single crowns and intracoronal restorations since they present lesser antagonistic tooth wear, marginal and integral adaptation results that are better than those of feldspathic ceramic. VITA Enamic is one of the novel hybrid ceramic materials in the dental market. The producer of the material suggests different finishing and polishing procedures for VITA Enamic. Thus, the objective of the present study was investigation of color changes caused from different finishing and polishing procedures of VITA Enamic which is a new hybrid ceramic material combining the positive features of a ceramic and a composite.
Methods: 90 specimens were prepared 2x10x12 mm diameters from high translucency (HT) and translucency (T) 2M2 shade VITA Enamic blocks. The specimens were divided into 6 groups. For each of the groups, different finishing and polishing procedures, including VITA Enamic technical kit, clinical kit and glaze, were performed. Color changes were evaluated using by a clinical spectrophotometer. The data was analyzed using one-way ANOVA and Tukey’s post-hoc comparison. The significance level was set at α=0.05.
Results: There was statistically no difference between technical kit HT, technical kit T and clinical kit T groups (p>0.05). There was statistically difference between the clinical kit applied HT group, glaze applied HT group and glaze applied T group (p<0.05). The most shade difference, before finishing and after finishing, was observed clinical kit applied HT group. In the dental literature, the acceptable color difference threshold was taken as 2.36 for ΔE₀₀. Except the clinical kit applied HT group, all of the finishing and polishing techniques showed clinically acceptable color difference.
Conclusions: In the limitations of the present study, it may be suggested that finishing and polishing VITA Enamic restorations with the technical kit to have a minimal color difference between the selected color and the final stage of the restorations.