Evaluation of fracture resistance of mandibular incisors before and after endodontic treatment and metal ceramic crown placement

Background: Mandibular incisors are the smallest among the permanent dentition, with thin enamel and dentin. Intact teeth do not fracture easily while mastication. Objectives: To evaluate the fracture resistance of mandibular incisors after endodontic treatment and metal ceramic crown placement. Materials and methods: Eighty recently extracted intact mandibular incisors were divided into four groups of twenty each based on root canal treatment and crowns, intact natural tooth without RCT and crown preparation was used as control group. Each tooth was mounted separately in acrylic block and subjected to loading in universal load testing machine until fracture, results were analyzed by one-way ANOVA and Turkey's multiple post hoc procedures. Results: The results showed that Fracture resistance of teeth restored with metal ceramic crowns was very high when compared to the teeth without crowns (p<0.05).There was no statistically significant difference between intact and endodontically treated teeth (p>0.05). Conclusion: The study concluded that endodontic treatment and tooth preparation followed by metal ceramic restoration increased the fracture resistance of mandibular incisors.