Wear and marginal adaptation of composite resin inlays

MOD inlays were made with conventional, coarse hybrid, fine hybrid, and two microfilled composite resins. They were adhesively luted in six extracted human molars for each group and were subjected to longitudinal, in vitro testing. Final wear ranged from 46.8 +/- 18.6 microns for fine hybrid composite resin to 132.0 +/- 39.3 microns for conventional composite resin for the inlays and from 19.3 +/- 6.6 microns for homogeneous microfilled composite resin to 136.3 +/- 65.1 microns for coarse hybrid composite resin on enamel antagonists. The wear of the luting composite resins ranged from 11.2 +/- 11.2 microns to 20.0 +/- 23.6 microns. Marginal adaptation at the beginning of the test exceeded 88.7% of "continuous margin" for all groups in enamel. However, marginal gaps were evident in dentin without dentinal adhesives. Marginal adaptation of the microfilled composite resin inlays deteriorated during loads even when a dentinal adhesive and an inlay primer were used. The margins of the other composite resin inlays remained stable during load application.