Assessment of Surface Roughness of Teflon Archwires Immersed in Mouthwashes (An In-vitro Comparative Study)
Author(s): Mena Hasan Abdulqader* and Sami Kadhum Al-joubori
Abstract
Aim: the goal of this research is to see how two different mouthwashes affect the surface roughness of Teflon orthodontic arch wires. Materials and methods: round (0.018 inch) Teflon esthetic nickel titanium orthodontic arch wires were immersed in either Sidra Zac (fluoridated mouthwash), Biofresh (non-fluoridated mouth wash), or distilled water (control) for 1 week, 3weeks and 6 weeks at 37°C. After the immersion process, the surface roughness of arch wires was measured using atomic force microscopy. A one-way analysis of variance and Tukey's post hoc α=0.05, were used to analyze the roughness testing data. Results: ANOVA test has been shown a non-significant difference among immersion media after 1week period while after 3 weeks and 6 weeks there was a highly significant difference between different media. Conclusion: the distilled water didn’t increase the surface roughness significantly even after 6 weeks immersion period. The non-fluoridated mouthwash increases the surface roughness significantly after 6 weeks while the fluoridated mouthwash increases the roughness significantly after 3 weeks only with higher values. So that the fluoridated mouthwash is considered more aggressive on Teflon esthetic arch wires.