A Comparative Evaluation of the Fracture Resistance of Mineral Trioxide Aggregate (MTA) Plus and MTA Angelus: An In Vitro Study

Background Mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) is a biocompatible dental material used for root-end filling in endodontics. A wide variety of literature has been published on the assessment of fracture resistance of MTA. However, the results were conflicting in the reported studies, and the sample size used was insufficient to conclude the efficacy of materials such as MTA Plus and MTA Angelus. Therefore, this study was designed to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of two commercially available MTAs, namely, MTA Plus (Avalon Biomed Inc. by Prevest Denpro Ltd, Jammu, India) and MTA Angelus (Angelus Dental Solutions, Brazil) in terms of fracture resistance. Methodology To determine fracture resistance, 300 freshly extracted healthy human teeth with single roots and canals were collected by simple random sampling. Teeth were decoronated, the apical third was enlarged, and root canals were prepared to receive MTA as a 5 mm apical filling. The root segments were randomly categorized into two experimental groups of 100 samples each, namely, group A (MTA Plus) and group B (MTA Angelus), and the remaining 100 root segments were used as control (unfilled). Fracture resistance was determined using the Instron Universal testing machine. Results The results of our study showed statistically significant increased fracture resistance for MTA Plus (532.14 ± 5.19 N) than MTA Angelus (540.81 ± 3.56 N) and the control group (460.63 ± 7.91 N). Conclusions The control group showed the least fracture resistance. The composition and structure of MTA Angelus (group B) containing Portland cement, with a 4:1 addition of bismuth oxide, make it more fracture resistant than MTA Plus (group A).