Low-shrinking composites. Are they reliable for bonding orthodontic retainers?

Objective: To evaluate the shear bond strength (SBS), fracture mode, wire pull out (WPO) resistance and microleakage between low-shrinking and conventional composites used as a lingual retainer adhesive. Methods: A total of 120 human mandibular incisor teeth, extracted for periodontal reasons, were collected. Sixty of them were separated into two groups. To determine the SBS, either Transbond-LR (3M-Unitek) or Silorane (3M-Espe) was applied to the lingual surface of the teeth by packing the material into standard cylindrical plastic matrices (Ultradent) to simulate the lingual retainer bonding area. To test WPO resistance, 20 samples were prepared for each composite where the wire was embedded in the composite materialand cured. Then tensile stress was applied until failure of the composite occurred. The remaining 60 teeth were divided into two groups and multi-stranded 0.0215-inch diameter wire was bonded with the same composites. Microleakage was evaluated by the dye penetration method. Statistical analyses were performed by Wilcoxon, Pearson chi-square, and Mann-Whitney-U tests at p < 0.05 level. Results: The SBS and WPO results were not statistically significant between the two groups. Significant differences were found between the groups in terms of fracture mode (p < 0.001). Greater percentages of the fractures showed mix type failure (85%) for Silorane and adhesive (60%) for Transbond-LR. Microleakage values were lower in low-shrinking composite than the control and this difference was found to be statistically significant (p < 0.001). Conclusions: Low-shrinking composite produced sufficient SBS, WPO and microleakage values on the etched enamel surfaces, when used as a lingual retainer composite.