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Original Article

Wear resistance of four types of vacuum-formed retainer materials:


A laboratory study
Taiyub A. Rajaa; Simon J. Littlewoodb; Theresa Munyombwec; Nigel L. Bubbd

ABSTRACT

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Objective: To investigate the resistance to wear of four different vacuum-formed retainer (VFR)
materials: Essix C+, Essix ACE, Duran, and Tru-Tain. Essix C+ is a polypropylene polymer; the
other materials are polyethylene co-polymers.
Materials and Methods: The study was undertaken at the Leeds Dental Institute, Leeds, UK, with
26 samples in each group. The specimens were vacuum-formed according to the manufacturers’
guidelines, and a custom-made wear-simulation machine was used to conduct the test. Each
specimen was subjected to 1000 cycles of the wear simulation, with steatite balls as the antagonist
material. The resistance to wear of the VFR materials was evaluated by measuring the maximum
wear depth using noncontact, three-dimensional surface profilometry. The wear depth was given in
micrometers.
Results: The median wear depth was 63.20 mm for the Essix C+ group, 7.88 mm for the Essix ACE
group, 9.75 mm for the Duran group, and 12.08 mm for the Tru-Tain group. The Kruskal-Wallis test
to compare the four VFR materials detected a statistically significant difference between the groups
(P , .001). Comparisons of the groups using the Mann-Whitney U-test demonstrated that the
Essix C+ group had significantly greater wear than the other three groups (P , .001). There was no
statistically significant difference in median wear depth between the two groups with the least
amount of wear—the Essix ACE and Duran groups.
Conclusions: Under the standardized conditions of this laboratory study, the three polyethylene
co-polymer materials—Essix ACE, Duran, and Tru-Tain—exhibited significantly less wear than the
polypropylene material, Essix C+. (Angle Orthod. 2014;84:656–664.)
KEY WORDS: VFR; Vacuum-formed retainer; Wear resistance; Wear test

INTRODUCTION the pressures exerted from the facial and oral soft
tissues, occlusal forces, and posttreatment facial
Relapse is considered to be any change in tooth
growth and development.2 Clinicians have little or no
position or arch relationship that occurs during the
control over the influence of growth and soft tissue
initial posttreatment period.1 The exact causes of
factors on relapse, which adds to the difficulty of
relapse are difficult to identify, but there are thought managing the problem.
to be four factors that are responsible for its Over the past 30 years, several studies have
occurrence: the elastic recoil of the periodontal tissues, evaluated long-term dental stability following different
orthodontic treatment modalities.3–7 All of these studies
a
Specialist Orthodontist, St Luke’s Hospital, Bradford, UK. have had a minimum follow-up period of 10 years,
b
Consultant Orthodontist, St Luke’s Hospital, Bradford, UK.
extending to 20 years. Most of the treatment modal-
c
Lecturer in Biostatistics, Centre for Epidemiology & Biosta-
tistics, University of Leeds, Leeks, UK. ities—which included non-extraction, first premolar
d
Lecturer in Dental Materials, Leeds Dental Institute, Faculty extraction, second premolar extraction, serial extrac-
of Medicine and Health, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK. tion, and expansion treatment—showed long-term
Corresponding author: Dr Taiyub Raja, Department of relapse rates of up to 70%.
Orthodontics, St Luke’s Hospital, Little Horton Ln, Bradford,
Vacuum-formed retainers (VFRs) are removable,
BD5 0NA, UK
(e-mail: taiyub_raja@hotmail.com) clear, thermoplastic retainers. Ponitz8 first described
their use for the purpose of orthodontic retention in
Accepted: October 2013. Submitted: June 2013.
Published Online: December 23, 2013 1971. Since being introduced into the UK National
G 2014 by The EH Angle Education and Research Foundation, Health Service fee structure in 1996, the rate of
Inc. increase in the use of VFRs has been approximately

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WEAR RESISTANCE OF FOUR VACUUM-FORMED RETAINERS 657

nine times greater than that of Hawley retainers.9 A The material used as an antagonist has also been
vacuum machine adapts heat-softened plastic by the subject of much debate in the literature. A broad
negative pressure, creating a vacuum, and pulls the variety of antagonist materials, such as human
plastic onto a working study cast. The two most enamel, stainless steel, steatite, and dental porcelain,
common materials used for VFRs are polyethylene co- have been used, yet there appears to be no consensus
polymers and polypropylene polymers. on which of these materials is the most appropriate for
Polyethylene polymers have the advantage of use during wear testing.16–19
allowing acrylic to be bonded to the material and, The aim of this study was to investigate the
thus, are the plastic of choice when bite planes need to resistance to wear of four different commercially
be incorporated into the appliance. The material is also available VFR materials—Essix C+, Essix ACE,

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considered more esthetic because it is virtually Duran, and Tru-Tain. Resistance to wear of the
transparent. Polypropylene polymers are considered materials was evaluated by measuring the maximum
to be more durable and flexible, but esthetically they wear depth of the samples using noncontact, three-
are inferior to polyethylene because the material is dimensional surface profilometry. The wear depth was
translucent. Acrylic cannot be added to the plastic. given in micrometers.
The advantages of VFRs include low cost, ease of The null hypothesis for this study was that there is
fabrication, and patient acceptability due to minimal no difference in maximum wear depth between the four
bulk and thickness.10 One randomized controlled trial VFR materials after the materials have been subjected
has concluded that VFRs hold corrections of lower to a standardized wear test.
anterior teeth better and are more cost-effective than
Hawley retainers. The majority of patients appear to MATERIALS AND METHODS
prefer VFRs over Hawley retainers, and VFRs are less
likely to be broken.9,11 The study was a controlled laboratory study that did not
However, recent studies have found that there involve patients; hence, ethical approval was not needed.
appear to be some problems with the physical Samples were prepared at St Luke’s Hospital, Bradford,
properties of VFRs, in particular their resistance to UK, and the wear test and analysis of specimens were
wear. Campbell et al.12 looked into the reasons for done at the Leeds Dental Institute, Leeds, UK.
replacement of VFRs over a 1-year period. For 38% of Four well-known materials were chosen for inclusion
the retainers that needed replacing (13 out of 34), the in the study: Essix C+, Essix ACE, Duran, and Tru-
reason was because the retainer had worn away Tain (Table 1). The methodology was standardized for
excessively. Lindauer and Shoff13 noted that a number all the specimens, and each material was used as
of Essix retainers became perforated and cracked in supplied by the manufacturers. The specimens were
the 6–18 months following placement. all 1.0 mm thick (0.040 inches) and had dimensions of
As it is vital for VFRs to continue to be effective for 125 mm 3 125 mm before vacuum forming. The
many years because of the risk of relapse, there is a manufacturer’s instructions for each product were
need to investigate which VFR materials available followed in detail when vacuum forming.
commercially have the best resistance to wear. Wear
is defined as the removal of material from solid Sample Size
surfaces as a result of mechanical interaction between Estimates for sample size determination were
two or more relatively moving surfaces.14 Clinical wear obtained from the paper by Gardner et al.15 To detect
is a complex process and involves several mecha- a minimum clinical difference of two units with a
nisms interacting at once. standard deviation of 2.4, assuming a significance
At the time of writing, the authors are only aware of level of 5% (a 5 .05) and 80% power, the study
one published study that has investigated the wear needed to have 26 specimens per group.
properties of VFRs. In that study, Gardner et al.15
assessed three different VFR products for their Wear Testing
resistance to wear: two of the materials were polypro-
pylene polymers, whereas the third was a polyethylene An acrylic template block was manufactured to be
polymer. The samples underwent 1000 cycles of wear used in the Pro-Form vacuum forming machine for the
under a load of 25 kg using an Instron machine, with creation of the samples (Figure 1). The final speci-
steatite balls as the antagonist material. The authors mens were flat and rectangular in shape and placed in
found that the polyethylene material had significantly the custom-made sample holder prior to wear testing
less wear than the two polypropylene materials. There (Figure 2).
was no statistically significant difference found be- The wear machine used in this study has previously
tween the means of the two polypropylene products. been described in detail by Harrison and Lewis,20 with

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658 RAJA, LITTLEWOOD, MUNYOMBWE, BUBB

Table 1. VFR Materials Investigated in This Studya


Product Manufacturer Compositionb
Essix C+ Dentsply Raintree Essix, Bradenton, Fla Polypropylene
Essix ACE Dentsply Raintree Essix, Bradenton, Fla Co-polyester (of polyethylene terephthalate)
Duran SCHEU-Dental GmbH, Iserlohn, Germany Polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG)
Tru-Tain Tru-Tain, Rochester, Minn Polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG)
a
VFR indicates vacuum-formed retainer.
b
Composition confirmed after consultation with manufacturers.

some minor modifications made for this study. The Each specimen was abraded for 1000 cycles of the

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sample holder is secured to the base-plate, which is wear machine, which took 13 hours and 4 minutes to
moved horizontally by the electrical motor. Above this complete. A linear wear trough was clearly created in
are 10 steel rods that hold the antagonist/abrader the samples during this process. When the next set of
material—steatite balls 8 mm in diameter (PE Hines & specimens was tested, the wear machine was cleaned
Sons Ltd, Staffordshire, UK). At the superior end of the and lubricated and new abraders were used.
rods are weights that apply a load of 460 g as the The specimens were thoroughly cleaned with
steatite antagonist contacts the VFR specimen. distilled water and dried with air from a 3-in-1 dental
In this study, a cycle was defined as the horizontal air compressor to remove and clear any debris prior to
cycle of the base plate, which moves 16 mm horizon- scanning. The profilometer used for the analysis of
tally to the right and then 16 mm to the left, back to its samples was the Proscan 2000 (Scantron, Taunton,
start position. A complete horizontal cycle takes UK), which is a noncontact, three-dimensional surface
47 seconds. Simultaneously, the steel rods that secure profilometer that uses confocal multiplex sensors. The
the antagonist have a vertical drop of 3 mm that results S5/03 sensor used to scan all the samples has a
in contact of the steatite balls with the VFR sample. resolution of 0.01 mm and a spot size of 4 mm, thereby
The duration of contact is 0.2 seconds before the steel allowing detailed analysis. The central 4 mm of the
rods move upward again. Figure 3 is a diagram that wear trough was the area determined for analysis.
describes the major component parts of the wear The software affiliated with the Proscan 2000
machine and the movements caused by the camshaft. produced a series of two- and three-dimensional
images. An example of a scan from the Essix C+ group
is shown in Figure 4. The wear depth of the trough was
measured using a three-area wear-depth analysis. The
deepest area of the wear trough was compared against
the average depth of the two ‘‘normal height’’ areas on
either side. The output measure was drop in height (in
micrometers). The analysis was repeated, and an
average of the two readings was taken to be the wear
depth of the trough for that sample.

Statistical Analysis
Data analysis was carried out using SPSS version
16.0 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, Ill). The wear depth was
summarized using medians, interquartile range,
means, and standard deviations. The data in each
group were checked for Normality using a Shapiro-
Wilk test. The data violated the assumptions of
Normality and constant-variance required for analysis
of variance (P , .00); hence, nonparametric tests were
used in this study. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to
investigate whether differences existed between the
groups; where significance was found, further com-
parisons of groups were conducted using the Mann-
Figure 1. The heating element of the vacuum-forming machine
Whitney U-test for unpaired data.
acting on the VFR sheet. The acrylic template is in place over the A P value of .05 was considered to be statistically
vacuum area. significant. A Bonferroni correction was applied to the

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WEAR RESISTANCE OF FOUR VACUUM-FORMED RETAINERS 659

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Figure 2. The sample holder and loaded VFR samples.

P value to take into account the multiple comparisons were originally done. A Bland-Altman plot was used to
that were to be made. As six comparisons were assess intrarater agreement between the two read-
required in total, the new P value was calculated by ings.22 In addition to the Bland-Altman plot, bias
dividing .05 (the old P value) by 6 (the number of estimates and 95% limits of agreement were calculated.
comparisons conducted).21 Thus, the P value used to
indicate significance in the Mann-Whitney U-test was
RESULTS
.01 (rounded up to two decimal places).
To ensure consistency of the results, all the wear- Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics for the wear
depth measurements were repeated 2 weeks after they depth in the four treatment groups. The median wear

Figure 3. The major components and workings of the wear machine.

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660 RAJA, LITTLEWOOD, MUNYOMBWE, BUBB

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Figure 4. Proscan-produced cross-sectional and three-dimensional views of sample 20 from the Essix C+ group.

depth for the Essix C+ group was 63.20 mm, much The box-and-whisker plot in Figure 5 shows that
higher than the median wear depth in the other groups. Essix C+ had a much greater median wear depth
The median wear depth was 7.88 mm in the Essix ACE and more variation than the other three materials.
group, 9.75 mm in the Duran group, and 12.08 mm in The box plot demonstrates that the data was
the Tru-Tain group. skewed.

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WEAR RESISTANCE OF FOUR VACUUM-FORMED RETAINERS 661

Table 2. Median Wear Depth and Other Numerical Descriptive Statistics of the Groupsa
95% CI for Mean
Group Median, mm IQR Range Mean (SD) Lower Limit Upper Limit
Essix C+ 63.20 14.41 22.47 65.50 (7.66) 62.41 68.59
Essix ACE 7.88 5.09 15.25 9.80 (4.51) 7.98 11.62
Duran 9.75 3.67 11.70 10.26 (3.10) 9.01 11.51
Tru-Tain 12.08 11.41 19.60 14.03 (5.99) 11.62 16.45
a
n 5 26 per group. IQR indicates interquartile range; SD, standard deviation; CI, confidence interval.

The intrarater agreement was good, as demonstrat- The Kruskal-Wallis test showed that there were

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ed by the Bland-Altman plot (Figure 6). The mean of significant differences in the median wear depths
the differences (bias estimate) was 0.02 mm, and no between the four groups (P , .001). The results of
measurements were outside the 95% limits of agree- the group-wise comparisons using the Mann-Whitney
ment (0.31, 20.27). U-test are shown in Table 3. These results confirmed

Figure 5. Box-and-whisker plot comparing the VFR groups.

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Figure 6. Bland-Altman plot—level of intrarater agreement between wear readings.

that the Essix C+ group showed significantly more polyethylene copolymer, TR. Essix C+ was, therefore,
wear than the other three groups. The only other tested in both studies.
statistically significant difference was between the Gardner et al.15 reported that the mean wear in the
Essix ACE and Tru-Tain groups, with Essix ACE Essix C+ group was 5.9 mm, in the Invisacryl C group it
material shown to have less wear. was 6.1 mm, and in the TR group it was 1.6 mm. The
TR group (polyethylene copolymer) demonstrated
DISCUSSION significantly less wear than the two polypropylene
groups. The results in that study indicated that the
The laboratory study by Gardner et al.15 described in
polypropylene materials had 3.7 to 3.8 times greater
the introduction is the only published study the authors
wear than the polyethylene material under their
have found investigating the wear properties of VFRs.
standardized wear trial.
In that study, the authors tested three different VFR
The current study tested one polypropylene materi-
products, two of which were polypropylene polymers—
al, Essix C+, and three polyethylene copolymer based
Essix C+ and Invisacryl C—while the third was a
materials, Essix ACE, Duran, and Tru-Tain. The
Table 3. Summary of the Results Obtained Using the MWU Test to
median was used to report the findings, as the data
Compare VFR Groupsa were found to be nonparametric. The difference in
median wear depth between the Essix C+ group and
Comparison MWU P Value Result
the other three groups was statistically significant.
1. Essix C+ vs Essix ACE .001 Significant difference
Median wear depth in the Essix C+ group was eight
2. Essix C+ vs Duran .001 Significant difference
3. Essix C+ vs Tru-Tain .001 Significant difference times greater than that in the Essix ACE group, 6.4
4. Essix ACE vs Duran .170 No difference times greater than that in the Duran group, and 4.7
5. Essix ACE vs Tru-Tain .002 Significant difference times greater than that in the Tru-Tain group.
6. Duran vs Tru-Tain .028 No difference Though both studies used different summary mea-
a
MWU indicates Mann-Whitney U; VFR, vacuum-formed retainer. sures, the results show a similar, statistically significant

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WEAR RESISTANCE OF FOUR VACUUM-FORMED RETAINERS 663

trend. The findings of this study and the study by N An appropriately designed, randomized, controlled
Gardner et al.15 indicate that the polyethylene-based clinical trial may be helpful to determine whether
materials are at least 3.7 times more wear resistant these findings are replicated in vivo.
than the polypropylene materials. In total, both
studies have looked at six different widely available
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
VFR materials. Sheridan et al.10 stated that Essix C+
was extremely resistant to wear without providing The VFR materials used in this study were kindly provided by
supporting evidence. However, two laboratory stud- Ortho-Care, Bradford, UK (Essix C+ and Essix ACE); Euro-
dontic, Sheffield, UK (Duran); and Archform, Sheffield, UK
ies have now found that polyethylene copolymers are (Tru-Tain). Our thanks also go to Nigel Jacques, Elizabeth
more resistant to wear than polypropylene materials Hepburn, Michael Pullan, and Rashid Mian for their technical

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like Essix C+. expertise.
It is noted that there is a big difference between the
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