COMPARATIVE RADIOMETRIC EVALUATION OF SOME PROVISIONAL CROWN AND BRIDGE MATERIALS

Purpose: the aim of this study was to investigate the radiopacity of provisional crown and bridge materials (pcms) in comparison with human and bovine dental hard tissues. material and methods: a total of 56 samples, measuring 6 mm in diameter and 1 mm in thickness, with eight samples of each material were prepared from pcms; dentalon plus l (dl), dentalon plus m (dm), dentalon plus d (dd), ede temdent (td), imident (id), keen (ke) and voco structur 2 sc (st). the optical densities of each material, along with one tooth section (human molar tooth), bovine dentin and enamel samples, and an aluminium step wedge, were measured from radiographical images using a transmission densitometer. the data were analyzed by nonparametric 1- way anova (kruskal-wallis) and student-newman-keuls multiple range tests for post hoc comparison (α=0.05). results: the mean equivalent aluminium thickness values (mean ± standard deviation) of the materials were for ke (0.671 ± 0.053), dl (0.674 ± 0.046), td (0.684 ± 0.091), dd (0.702 ± 0.091), dm (0.703 ± 0.063), id (0.722 ± 0.032), st (1.079 ± 0.114), human dentin (1.225 ± 0.0762), bovine dentin (1.282 ± 0.045), bovine enamel (1.797 ± 0.124). among pcms, voco structur 2 sc had statistically significantly higher radiopacity values (p<0.05). the radiopacity values of the other materials did not reveal statistically significant difference (p>0.05). conclusion: the radiopacity values of all pcms were lower than the human and bovine dentin and enamel. the radiopacity values of st were significantly higher than other pcms.