Case report: 36 months spectrophotometric evaluation of color stability after resin infiltration in two young patients with enamel defects

BACKGROUND: Iconâ proved to be effective on enamel hypomineralized lesions such as White Spot Lesion (WSL), Developmental Defects of Enamel (DDE) and mild cases of Fluorosis.1, 2, 3 Colour stability over time is the main criticity of the treatment and a recent systematic review 4 showed that the clinical efficacy grade of resin infiltration to manage enamel hypomineralization is low, mainly because the follow-up period is limited to 12 months (5) and the long-term success rate is yet unknown. Moreover, most of the published data assessing the validity of the method are done on in vitro artificial lesions (4). The aim of the present case report was to evaluate the objective effectiveness on colour stability at 36 months of follow-up by resin infiltration in two siblings affected by celiac disease and presenting developmental defects of enamel (DDE) on the esthetically relevant teeth of the upper arch. METHO DS: The study was performed at Sapienza University, Rome, Italy. Eight permanent upper incisors with DDE were used in this clinical report at 1st Observation Unit of Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Sciences, “Sapienza” University of Rome. One trained operator executed Icon® infiltration; colour evaluation was performed using a calibrated reflectance spectrophotometer (SpectroShade, MICRO, Serial N HDL1407, MHT, Arbizzano di Negrar, Verona, Italy) at T0 (before treatment), at T1 (12 months), T2 (36 months) follow-up. To evaluate colour stability, the colour difference (DE) was calculated: I)DE1 between T0-T1; II)DE2 between T1-T2 and III)DE3 between T0-T2. Comparison of the DE with the acceptability threshold (AT) was made. RESULTS: Overall, the average DE values in the incisalcentral and gingival sections indicating the amount of colour change after resin infiltration between T1 and T0 were 4.46, 3.54, 4.76; between T2 and T1 were 1.71, 2.35, 2.28 while between T2 and T0 were 3.83, 3.74, 5.34. DE values at 36 months are lower than acceptability threshold (3.3). CONCLUSIONS: The 36 months of follow-up showed a mean DE of 2.1, on the other hand the colour change after treatment at 12 months of follow-up was 4.3. Colour variation at 3 years of follow up was lower than acceptability threshold indicating an overall good colour stability.