Purpose: To evaluate if bovine enamel and dentin are appropriate substitutes for the respective human hard tooth tissues to test shear bond strength (SBS) and fracture analysis.
Materials and methods: 80 sound and caries-free human erupted third molars and 80 freshly extracted bovine permanent central incisors (10 specimens for each group) were used to investigate enamel and dentine adhesion of one 2-step self-etch (SE) and one 3-step etch and rinse (E&R) product. To test SBS the buccal or labial areas were ground plane to obtain appropriate enamel or dentine areas. SE and E&R were applied and SBS was measured prior to and after 500 thermocycles between +5 and +55°C. Fracture analysis was performed for all debonded areas.
Results: ANOVA revealed significant differences of enamel and dentin SBS prior to and after thermocycling for both of the adhesives. SBS- of E&R-bonded human enamel increased after thermocycling but SE-bonded did not. Bovine enamel SE-bonded showed higher SBS after TC but E&R-bonded had lower SBS. No differences were found for human dentin SE- or E&R-bonded prior to or after thermocycling but bovine dentin SE-bonded increased whereas bovine dentine E&R-bonded decreased. Considering the totalized and adhesive failures, fracture analysis did not show significances between the adhesives or the respective tooth tissues prior to or after thermocycling.
Conclusion: Although SBS was different on human and bovine teeth, no differences were found for fracture analysis. This indicates that solely conducted SBS on bovine substrate are not sufficient to judge the perfomance of adhesives, thus bovine teeth are questionnable as a substrate for shear bond testing.