Restitution of enamel after interdental stripping

This paper studies the effect of interdental stripping on the enamel surface and evaluates methods to restitute the treated surface. Extracted teeth mounted in a semielastic material were subjected to stripping by different kinds of steel strips. The treated enamel surfaces were then polished in several different ways. The effects were studied by SEM and profilometry. It was concluded that the coarsest strips produced irregularities of such a magnitude that polishing had very limited effect. Polishing starting with coarse polishing strips followed by gradually finer gave the best result. An increase in number of strokes and use of all grades of polishing strips slightly improved the result.