To Analyse the Erosive Potential of Commercially Available Drinks on Dental Enamel and Various Tooth Coloured Restorative Materials - An In-vitro Study.

INTRODUCTION: With the enormous change in life style pattern of a common man through the past few decades, there has been proportional variation in the amount and frequency of consumption of drinks. An increased consumption of these drinks will concurrently increase enamel surface roughness by demineralization, resulting in hypersensitivity and elevated caries risk.

AIM: The present study was designed to evaluate the erosive potential of commercially available drinks on tooth enamel and various tooth coloured restorative materials.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Extracted human teeth were taken and divided into four groups i.e. tooth enamel, glass ionomer cement, composite and compomer. Four commercially available drinks were chosen these were Coca -Cola, Nimbooz, Frooti and Yakult. The pH of each drink was measured. Each group was immersed in various experimental drinks for a period of 14 days. The erosive potential of each drink was measured by calculating the change in average surface roughness of these groups after the immersion protocol in various drinks. The data analysis was done by One Way Anova, Post-Hoc Bonferroni, and paired t -test.

RESULTS: Group II-GIC showed highest values for mean of change in average surface roughness and the values were statistically significant (p<0.001) with tooth enamel, composite and compomer (p=0.002). Coca-cola showed the highest erosive potential and Yakult showed the lowest, there was no statistical significant difference between the results shown by Yakult and Frooti.

CONCLUSION: Characteristics which may promote erosion of enamel and tooth coloured restorative materials were surface texture of the material and pH of the drinks.