Retention of esthetic veneers on primary stainless steel crowns

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the amount of shearing force necessary to fracture, dislodge or deform the esthetic veneer facings of four commercially available veneered primary incisor stainless steel crowns. The four types tested were: Cheng Crowns, [Peter Cheng Orthodontic Laboratory]; Whiter Biter Crown(R) II, [White Bite Inc.]; Kinder Krowns, [Mayclin Dental Studio, Inc]; and NuSmile(R) Primary Crowns, [Orthodontic Technologies, Inc]. The crowns (#4 right central incisor) from each manufacturer were obtained with the facings attached. The crowns were soaked for ninety days and thermocycled at 4 degrees C and 55 degrees C for 500 45-second cycles. The crowns were cemented to standardized chromium cobalt metal dies. Each die was placed in to a custom holder on the Instron Universal testing machine. A force was applied at the incisal edge of the veneer at 148 degrees, (the primary interincisal angle), with a crosshead speed of 0.05 inches/minute until the veneer either fractured, dislodged or deformed. The mean force (Ibs) required +/-SD to produce failure, in descending order, was as follows: Cheng (107.8 +/- 17.3); NuSmile (100.2 +/- 18.2); KinderKrown (91.3 +/- 27.4)d Whiter Biter (81.5 +/- 21.7). To test the hypothesis of no difference among the four manufacturers, an analysis of variance was performed using PROC GLM. The resultant F statistic was 2.79 (p<0.0543), indicating a marginally statistically significant difference in the response variable ''pressure'' among the four groups. A posthoc test was then performed to ascertain where these differences occurred. These results, using Tukey's studentized range test for pair-wise comparisons, suggested that the only difference was between the Cheng and Whiter Biter manufacturers.