Gender-Dependent Quality of Shade Matching of Dental Professionals and Students

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to evaluate shade matching ability of dental professionals and students using the VITA 3D-Master shade guide. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A hundred and twenty participants have been assigned to one of four groups as follows: specialists in prosthodontics (SPs), residents in prosthodontics (RPs), dental technicians (DTs) and dental students (DSs). The Toothguide Training Box (TTB) was used to test the participants’ shade-matching ability based on using 3 exercises and a final test. The mistakes were recorded during the exercises and mistake ratios (MR) were calculated. Time, scores, and color difference values (ΔE) were recorded and calculated. The one-way ANOVA was used to analyze the differences, and multiple regression analyses were used to evaluate the relationship in mean MRs, time, score and ΔE values between the groups. RESULTS: Male participants needed significantly greater amount of time than females to complete the final test (P<0.05). Male SPs achieved a significantly lower percentage of mistake ratios in second exercise than RPs (P<0.05), needed significantly less time than DSs to complete the final test and achieved significantly higher scores than RPs (P<0.05). Female SPs assessed the highest and DSs and RPs the lowest color differences (P<0.05). The results obtained from the exercises and final tests highly affected the amount of estimated color difference in both male and female groups (by 78% and 76%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Within the population tested, gender of the participants showed a significant impact on quality of shade matching of dental professionals and students.