Dental alloys for direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) are available on the market today, but there is little scientific evidence reported on their characteristics. One of them is the release of ions, as an indicator of the corrosion characteristics of a dental alloy. Within this research, the difference in the elution of metals from DMLS and cast (CM) samples of Co-Cr-Mo dental alloy in saliva-like medium of three different pH was examined by inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The obtained results show that the metal elution in artificial saliva from the DMLS alloy was lower than the elution from the CM alloy. The release of all investigated metal ions was influenced by the acidity, both from the DMLS and CM alloy, throughout the investigated period of 30 days. The change in acidity from a pH of 6.8 to a pH of 2.3 for the cast alloy led to a higher increase of the elution of Co, Cr and Mo from CM than from the DMLS alloy. The greatest release out of Co, Cr and Mo was for Co for both tested alloys. Further, the greatest release of all ions was measured at pH 2.3. In saliva of pH 2.3 and pH 4.5, the longer the investigated period, the higher the difference between the total metal ion release from the CM and DMLS alloys. Both alloys showed a safe level of elution according to the ISO definition in all investigated acidic environments.

De Gruyter | 270 years of academic publishing

Composite cements are widely used in dentistry, due to their positive characteristics (bond strength, color, low solubility etc.). However, removal of the cement presents one of the drawbacks of their use, since incomplete removal might cause bacterial adhesion, gingival irritation and subsequent inflammation. The aim of this study was to investigate surface characteristics of the composite cements after different ways of excess removal, by means of profilometric and SEM analysis. Thirty leucite reinforced ceramic specimens were divided into three groups, based on the manner of excess cement removal: Group 1 (polished): excess was fully polymerized for 40 s, then removed; Group 2 (cleaned): excess was removed with a cotton roll, after which cement was fully polymerized for 40 s; Group 3 (pre-polymerized): excess was light cured for 5 s, after which cement excess was broken with an instrument and then fully polymerized for 40 s. Surface roughness was measured using a surface profilometer. Subsequently, specimens were inspected by a scanning electron microscope. The data were statistically analyzed. The examination of variants of average values proved the statistically significant difference in the height of average values per group, p<0.0001; the statistically significantly highest values were for the pre-polymerized group, whereas the statistically significantly lowest values were for the polished group. Results of this study show that utmost attention has to be paid to the excess removal procedure, since surface roughness parameters directly depend on the choice of the applied technique.