Tooth Shade-Matching Ability Between Groups of Students with Different Color Knowledge

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of gender and knowledge of color in dentistry on the visual shade-matching ability of dental students with no experience in shade matching and without identification skills.

A total of 32 color-normal participants, 16 female (F) and 16 male (M), completed all phases of the experiment. The control group did not listen to a 60-minute lecture (FNL = females that did not listen; MNL = males that did not listen); the other group listened to a lecture about color in dentistry (FL = females that listened; ML= males that listened). The Toothguide Training Box (TTB) (VITA Zahnfabrik) was used. The final exam consisted of a total of 15 lightness-chroma-hue tasks. The correct selection of lightness (L*), chroma (C*), and hue (h*) was observed, as was the computed shade-matching score, ΣΔE*ab, for each participant. Mann-Whitney U test was used for statistical analysis of the data (α = .05) (SPSS 22.0 for Windows [IBM]).

Gender was found to play an important role in shade matching. The FL group selected L* better (L* = 12.11) in comparison with the MNL group (L* = 11.00), which is not significantly different (P = .19). The FL group selected L* better in comparison with the ML group (L* = 10.57), which is not significantly different (P = .10). The FNL group selected C* statistically significantly better (C* = 9.86) than did the ML group (C* = 8.57) (P = .016). The shade-matching score, ΣΔE*ab, for group FL (ΣΔE*ab = 22.50) and group ML (ΣΔE*ab = 31.79) was marginally statistically significant (P = .06).

A 60-minute lecture from the field of color in dentistry has a minimal impact on tooth-shade matching, whereas gender plays an important role.