Salivary contamination and post-cured resin/resin lute bond

A previous study has shown that sandblasting and silane priming a post-cured inlay resin gave a secure bond to dual-cure luting resin. To determine the influence of salivary contamination 4 additional groups of 15 post-cured resin discs were mounted in acrylic cylinders, their faces sandblasted with 50 microns alumina and silane primed. Surface treatments with saliva (sa), air/water spray (a/w), phosphoric acid gel (pa), and silane (si) followed in the order listed: A) control, no further treatment; B) sa, a/w; C) sa, a/w, si; D) sa, a/w, pa a/w; E) sa, a/w, pa, a/w, si. A 3.9 mm diameter column of dual-cure resin lute was then bonded to the dry stored in water surfaces. Specimens were stored in water for 2 weeks after which the dual-cure resin columns were sheared off the post-cured resin discs. Shear bond strengths were A) 19.2 +/- 3.7, B) 17.4 +/- 3.9, C) 16.7 +/- 3.1, D) 15.6 +/- 3.5, E) 15.4 +/- 2.3 MPa. One-way ANOVA and Duncan's Multiple Range Procedure showed groups D and E to be significantly lower than the uncontaminated control group A (p < 0.05). There were 2 adhesive failures in group B and all others were cohesive within the post-cured resin discs. This implies that air/water alone after salivary contamination is an unreliable cleansing method. The low shear bond values for Groups D and E may have been related to inadequate clearance of the phosphoric acid gel. It was concluded that salivary contamination adversely affected the quality of the bonds studied and decontamination using phosphoric acid gel resulted in significantly reduced shear bond strengths.