Dentin adhesives and microleakage in cervical resin composites

This paper reports the effect of dentin bonding agents on marginal leakage in cervical cavities without the classical cavity preparation design. Wedge-shaped cervical cavities were cut on extracted teeth with the gingival cavosurface margin of each cavity involving dentin. The specimens were randomly assigned to three groups of 40 each: Group 1 (control), restored with Fuji glass ionomer; Group 2, restored with Scotchbond 2 adhesive and Silux Plus resin and Group 3, restored with Tenure adhesive and Perfection resin. Half of the specimens in each group were thermocycled. All specimens were then stored in basic fuchsin dye after which microleakage of the restorations was assessed by dye penetration. A grading scale of 0 to 3 was used as the scoring criteria. The results showed that differences were more pronounced at the gingival margin. The control group specimens exhibited the least microleakage. There was no significant difference between thermocycled and non-thermocycled specimens for each category of materials used. There was, however, a significant difference between the experimental groups and the control groups. The dentin adhesives tested did not completely eliminate microleakage at the gingival margin of cervical cavities.