Reliability of dental color selection by students in color system

One of the concerns faced by dentists is the reliability of tooth shade selection. The present research was carried out concerning the increase in patients’ expectation of beauty and the importance of conformity in restorative materials for success in beauty restorations and also due to the lack of suffecient research in this field.The current study was performed to determine the reliability of tooth shade selection done by the students of semesters 11-10 using vita Classic system at Tehran Islamic Azad University, School of dentistry, in 2015.

A cross sectional study was carried out on 60 students of dentistry who had no colorblindness. Ishihara color-blindness test was taken from all of the students and then they were asked to choose the color of patients’ left maxillary central incisor using four vita Classic shade guide kits with unknown codes. In order to unify the condition, the patient was asked to brush her teeth and remove her makeup. The light was assimilated using “day light” device made in Taiwan and also tooth shade selection test was done in 30 centimeters distance from the patients and no time limitation. A grey screen was used to prevent eyestrain. After 10 days, the experiment was repeated with similar conditions.

The reliability of shade selection in students (R) was 0.96 or %96 and the congruency (R²) was 81 percent. Also, %65 of excellent reliability and %24 of good reliability and 8 moderate reliability and %3 of low reliability was observed among the residents. Relevant factors like gender, wearing glasses, and academic semester were not observed to be statistically significant (p<0.2).

It saems the there is a high reliability of shade selection in students and it does not have any relationship with other factors.