Preliminary Investigating on the Influence of Whitening on Natural Tooth Wear Resistance

This paper is developed in the framework of dental tribology. The aim of this paper is to show the first results of an experimental investigation devoted to the analysis of the influence of whitening on the wear resistance of natural teeth. Three natural human teeth were employed and for each one was considered one half whiten and the other no. Then six different specimens were obtained by cutting the natural teeth and by putting them in the holder used in the reciprocating tribometer in which they were tested against zirconia flats. The wear of each part of the tooth were evaluated in a novel way, by scanning the teeth surface before and after the test and by overlapping the reconstructed digital surfaces for the calculation of wear volume. In the limitation of this first investigation due to the few specimens analyzed, the results confirm an increasing of the volumetric wear on the teeth subject to whitening procedures.