Background: Aesthetic brackets have considerably less mechanical undercuts than those on a metal mesh base design, and therefore they might be expected to have a greater bond failure rate if they are used without a silane-coupling agent.
Aim: This study was designed to evaluate the effect of using Self etching on the shear bond strength of the Aesthetic brackets.
Material and methods: This study was carried out on fivety premolar teeth were collected from orthodontic patients attending out-patient orthodontic clinic, faculty of Dental Medicine, Al-Azhar University who will be treated with premolar extraction. The teeth were cleaned with tap-water, brushed and stored in distilled water with 0.1% thymol until use. The collected teeth were divided into two groups, one of them was used in dry condition and the other was used in contaminated condition. Each group was sub divided into two equal subgroups of teeth with uncoated and pre coated ceramic bracket for testing the shear. Descriptive statistics including the mean; standard deviation; minimum and maximum values for the Shear bond strength (SBS) were calculated for each of the 10 test groups. The results of this study showed that New metal-reinforced orthodontic ceramic brackets (Clarity brackets) presented a clinically acceptable shear bond strength value with Transbond Moisture-insensitive primer and Transbond Plus-self etching primer can be used successfully for bonding clarity ceramic brackets (uncoated and pre coated) under dry and salivary contaminated condition.
Conclusion: Pre coated ceramic brackets in contaminated condition presented higher self etching primer than uncoated ceramic brackets.