Influence of Physical Fatigue, Gender and Education on Shade Matching

Objectives: To evaluate the influence of physical fatigue, gender, level of experience on shade matching by using  a visual colour training instrument. Methods: Fifty senior-year dental school students and 10 specialists in prosthodontics with a mean clinical experience of 11 (range 3 - 19) (25 male; 35 female; mean age 25, range 22 - 50) were calibrated on using a visual training instrument Toothguide Training Box (TTB),Vita Zahnfabrik, Germany). The evaluations were made independently and a total of 120 final tests were made by 60 observers under the same optimized light source at the end of training of TTB, at 08:30 am and 16:00 pm for same days. Time used to take TTB, scores, wrong answers for lightness (V), chroma (C) and hue (H) selection of participants (colour groups 1,2,3,4,5) were recorded. The data were statistically analyzed (Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test and Mann-Whitney Test). Results: No statistical significance between morning and afternoon final scores were determined, respectively (P=0.887). The influences of time and age on shade determination were insignificant (P>0.05) while higher mean rank scores for females (34.93) were obtained than males (24.30) in the afternoon (P=0.02). The differences among the mistakes in matching color dimension (V,C,H) and colour groups (1,2,3,4,5) were insignificant (P>0.05). Conclusion: Physical fatigue did not play an important role in shade matching and females achieved higher scores than males.