The purpose of this study was to assess bond strength of three self-etching and two total-etch adhesive systems bonded to primary tooth enamel and dentin.
Materials and methods: Forty extracted primary human molars were selected and abraded in order to create flat buccal enamel and occlusal dentin surfaces. Teeth were assigned to one of the adhesive systems: Adper Scotch Bond Multi Purpose, Adper Single Bond 2, Adper Prompt L-Pop, Clearfil SE Bond and AdheSE. Immediately to adhesive application, a composite resin (Filtek Z250) block was built up. After 3 months of water storage, each sample was sequentially sectioned in order to obtain sticks with a square cross-sectional area of about 0.72 mm2. The specimens were fixed lengthways to a microtensile device and tested using a universal testing machine with a 50-N load cell at a crosshead speed of 0.5 mm/min. Microtensile bond strength values were recorded in MPa and compared by Analysis of Variance and the post hoc Tukey test (a = 0.05).
Results: In enamel, Clearfil SE Bond presented the highest values, followed by Adper Single Bond 2, AdheSE and Adper Scotch Bond Multi Purpose, without significant difference. The highest values in dentin were obtained with Adper Scotch Bond Multi Purpose and all other adhesives did not present significant different values from that, except Adper Prompt L-Pop that achieved the lowest bond strength in both substrates. Adper Scotch Bond Multi Purpose and Adper Single Bond 2 presented significantly lower values in enamel than in dentin although all other adhesives presented similar results in both substrates.
Conclusions: contemporary adhesive systems present similar behaviors when bonded to primary teeth, with the exception of the one-step self-etching system; and self-etching systems can achieve bond strength values as good in enamel as in dentin of primary teeth.