This invention relates to a provisional crown-and-bridge resin comprising a powder-liquid restorative system.
Provisional crown-and-bridge resins are used in the mouth after a dentist has prepared the tooth, as a short-term filling-like structure for the patient to use during the time the laboratory is manufacturing the permanent crown or other prosthesis. Typically these resins are supposed to remain in place for several weeks, but may, in some cases, remain for as long as two years or more.
For some time the materials that have been used for temporary crown-to-bridge resins have been based on systems employing methyl methacrylate, for example, systems bases on methyl methacrylate resin and poly (methyl methacrylate) powder in conjunction with a peroxide and amine curing system. These systems have had high cure shrinkages, so that they have tended to pull away from the tooth as they cure.
A more serious difficulty has been that these prior art systems have tended to cause tissue irritation, apparently due to traces of the methyl methacrylate monomer remaining in the cured polymer. These traces may be due to the difficulty of getting an exactly stoichiometric amount of curing agent mixed with the resin or to less-than-perfect mixture of ingredients.
A recent system from Germany described as epimine has very low cure shrinkage, but it also has exhibited gingival irritation, apparently due to some toxic curing agent. This German material has also been somewhat weaker in impact strength than the materials previously used and is very translucent.
In 1978 some new systems appeared that were based on poly (ethyl methacrylate). These systems have been advertised as having low cure shrinkages compared to methyl methacrylate and also a lower exotherm than methyl methacrylate systems. They have not however, solved the gingival irritation problem.
Another problem common to all systems used heretofore has been that they are transparent to X-rays, so that X-ray photographs do not detect their presence. This fact can become very serious if, as is not uncommon, a patient swallows the provisional crown or aspirates it into a lung, for it then becomes impossible to locate the crown with X-rays, or even know whether it is in a lung or in the digestive tract.
Among the objects of the invention are:
To provide an improved provisional crown-and-bridge resin,
To provide a provisional crown-and-bridge resin that does not irritate gingival tissue,
To provide a provisional crown-and-bridge resin with very low shrinkage upon cure,
To provide a suitably tough and adherent crown-and-bridge resin, and
To provide an X-ray opaque crown-and-bridge resin.