Melbourne Dental School - Theses
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ItemThe effects of tooth preparation on intrapulpal pressure: a laboratory study( 1998)The objective of this study was to determine intrapulpal pressure changes during tooth preparation with either diamond or tungsten carbide burs in a dental highspeed handpiece, in the laboratory. Twenty premolar teeth were collected and randomly assigned to two groups. Group 1 received preparation with diamond burs, Group 2 with tungsten carbide burs. The teeth were mounted on a pressure transducer and the pulp chambers filled with saline. A thickness of 0.1 mm of tooth tissue was removed from the proximal surface of each tooth, alternating dry and wet-cutting, until the pulp chamber was exposed. Pressure and temperature changes were recorded during tooth preparation. At the 0 - 1 mm depth of remaining dentine level, dry cutting with diamond and tungsten carbide burs generated a mean positive pulpal pressure of 11.64 kPa and 6.06 kPa respectively. Wet cutting under the same conditions produced 0.58 kPa and 0.15 kPa respectively. The difference between wet and dry cutting was highly significant (p<0.001). Diamond burs produced significantly higher pressure increases than carbide burs, at all levels, for both wet and dry techniques (p<0.05). When cutting greater than 2 mm from the pulp, tooth preparation created an average 0.09 kPa pressure increase, which was not influenced by either coolant use or bur type. The temperature change was minimal during wet cutting and only minor temperature increases were recorded during dry cutting. It is concluded that significant pressure changes occur in the pulp chamber during tooth preparation when the remaining dentine thickness is less than 2 mm.