Qualitative evaluation of the effects of professional oral hygiene instruments on prosthetic ceramic surfaces

During professional hygiene procedures, different instruments used may cause various damage to dental prostheses. Deplaquing and scaling with curettes and ultrasonic instruments may inadvertently increase the surface roughness of the material and the risk of future bacterial adhesion and/or also compromise the marginal seal of the prosthesis. Hence, the aim of this study was to assess the qualitative effects of two types of curettes and one piezoelectric instrument with a stain-less-steel tip on three types of metal-free samples. After treating the samples with different instru-mentations, they were analyzed using the scanning electron microscope and then underwent a qualitative microanalysis by using a spectroscopy machine. All the materials tested in this study have undergone significant changes of their superficial structure after instrumentation both with mechanical and manual instruments. Plastic curettes appeared to be less aggressive than the other in-struments. Disilicate samples show a significantly lower degree of surface glazing erosion com-pared to the zirconia sample with all the instruments used.