Fatigue resistance of teeth restored with fiber posts and different post cementation strengths

This study sought to evaluate how different post cementation strategies affected the fatigue resistance of bovine teeth restored with glass fiber posts. The canals of 63 single-rooted bovine teeth (each 16 mm in length) were prepared to 9 mm using a preparation drill from a double-tapered fiber post system. Each specimen was embedded in a PVC cylinder using acrylic resin up to 3 mm of the most coronal portion of the specimen and was allocated into one of seven groups (n = 9) based on the strategies for cementation. After cementation, a standard core build-up was made with composite resin. The specimens were stored for seven days and submitted to mechanical cycling (50 N, 8 Hz, 37 degrees C). After fatigue testing, a score was given to each specimen, based on the number of fatigue cycles required to fracture the specimens; the scores were submitted to statistic analysis (Kruskal-Wallis, alpha = 0.05). The strategy for post cementation did not affect the resistance to fatigue (P = 0.8669). Based on the results, the resistance to fatigue does not appear to depend on the post cementation strategy.