EVALUATION OF COMPRESSIVE STRENGTH AND SURFACE ROUGHNESS OF REPEATED SURGICAL FISSURE CARBIDE BUR

Abstract

In this paper, impacted tooth are mostly found in human, especially the mandibular third molars. Due to their inability to erupt, they often are surgical removed, and may necessitate the use surgical round and fissure carbide bur at the osteotomy site. In the clinical scenarios, these surgical burs are reused following sterilization. However, they may lose its cutting efficacy following each reuse. The objectives of the study were to compare the compressive strength and surface roughness of surgical fissure carbide bur after each of four successive reuses. For this study, 15 new carbide fissure surgical burs were utilized, each bur was used to make a longitudinal cut to molar teeth for 1 to 4 cutting and sterilization cycles, following each cycle the burs were evaluated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and, confocal laser microscopy, and their compressive strength were measurement. Statistical analysis was carried out with one-way ANOVA and Tukey post hoc test with p-value 0.05 statistically significant. The results revealed the surface roughness of surgical carbide fissure burs altered statically significantly following their first usage as compared to the unused new burs. Although statically not significant, a large decrease in their compressive strength was note between the 2^nd and 3^rd reuse cycles. Statistically significant decrease in compressive strength of burs were noted at the 4^th cycle as compared to controls. Therefore, to maintain cutting efficiency and to prevent breakage, surgical carbide fissure burs should not be reused more than 2 times following sterilization.

Keywords: Surgical Carbide Bur, Repeated Sterilization, Surface Roughness