Ceramic veneers: Colour change in luting agents used for bonding them.

Ceramic Veneer

Tooth preparation

Veneer bonded to tooth surface

This work is ongoing.

I am working on the hypothesis that there is a change in the colour of a resin luting agent upon curing.

Resin based luting agents are used to bond ceramic veneers to teeth. It is well known that the thinness of the veneer will allow the shade of the luting agent to affect the over all shade of the final restoration.

So, basically I am making veneers of a standard thickness using E max (Ivoclar-Vivadent)on prepared, freshly extracted human central incisors.I will be bonding these veneers using 2 luting agents- Variolink II (dual cured) and Choice 2 (light cured). The colour of the tooth with the veneer placed on it will be assessed in terms of the L , a, b values using a spectrophotometer. This assessment will be done after placing the veneer without the luting agent and after that, before and after the curing of the luting agent.

The study should give us insights about the colour change in the tooth-veneer complex that we should expect after the veneer is bonded, using different types of luting agents.

The pilot study is done and we are quite surprised by the results as of now.

What interested me in this project?... Well, the chance of learning and prepping teeth for veneers, discovering how to make a porcelain veneers, the aspect of bonding and spectrophotometric testing... and above all- Its Prosthodontics!!