Impression precision after hydrogen peroxide sterilization of scanner sleeves

The iTero Element (Align Technologies, San Jose, CA, USA) is a widely used intraoral scanning device, and its protective sleeves for the scanning head are provided for single use. This condition puts the clinical management budget under financial strain and creates a disadvantage for managing environmental waste. The objective of our research was to assess how repeated sterilization of disposable scan head covers with hydrogen peroxide affected the precision of digital impressions.

Intraoral scans were carried out using the iTero Element 5D scanner on 26 patients. Hydrogen peroxide was used to sterilize the sleeves for 45 min at 45 °C. The sterilization procedure was repeated between the second, third, and fourth intraoral scans. Each tooth was given a score based on the color change between the first and fourth scans, which were superimposed using the iTero TimeLapse technology. The OrthoCAD® software (Align Technologies) was also used to measure the intercanine, interpremolar, and intermolar distances, as well as the mesiodistal dimensions of all the teeth between the first molars.

No statistically significant difference was found between the mesiodistal dimensions of the teeth and the intercanine, interpremolar, and intermolar distances between the 1st and 4th scans. There was no correlation between the mean differences of the mesiodistal dimensions of the teeth obtained with the 1st and 4th scans and TimeLapse scores.

After sterilization with hydrogen peroxide, the repeatability of digital measurements of the protective sleeves of the intraoral scanner was not adversely affected, and their clinical performance was maintained.