Microleakage between endodontic temporary restorative materials placed at different times

Occlusal endodontic access preparations are occasionally made in teeth without removing the original restoration. However, microleakage between restorative materials that are placed at different times has not been extensively studied. Therefore, our objective was to compare microleakage at three areas: between an access opening restorative material and the cavity wall; between an additional material placed later to patch a secondary opening in the first restorative material and the original restorative material itself; and between the secondarily placed material and the cavity wall. Standard endodontic access preparations were made in 120 noncarious, nonrestored crowns of extracted human molars. These teeth were divided into six experimental groups. Another four molars were controls. The endodontic access cavities were restored with either IRM or amalgam as the primary restorative material. After 14 days, half of the primary restorations was removed, and this defect was filled with a secondary restorative material: IRM, Caviton, or a double seal of Caviton and IRM. Microleakage was measured linearly as the extent of basic fuchsin dye penetration under a stereomicroscope after thermal cycling (5 degrees and 55 degrees C for 100 cycles) and tooth sectioning. Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used for statistical analysis. Results indicated significantly less microleakage between primary and secondary restorative materials placed at different times than microleakage between primary temporary restorative materials and the access cavity wall, regardless of the type of primary restorative material used (IRM or amalgam).