Patients’ acceptance of shade selected in the fabrication of pfm crowns: spectrophotometric method compared with the visual method.

BACKGROUND: Aesthetic factors are increasingly important in the fabrication of dental prostheses. Ultimately, dental restoration must accurately reproduce the tooth shade that matches the neighboring teeth to satisfy the patient’s aesthetic demand.Objective: To compare the effectiveness of conventional visual and digital spectrophotometric methods of shade selection for porcelainfused-to-metal crown restoration with respect to patients’acceptability of the outcome product.MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twenty-six teeth were included in the study. Three calibrated examiners performed the visual shade selection, while the primary investigator performed the spectrophotometric shade selection. The shade of the fabricated PFM crowns for each method was subjectively rated by the patient and objectively rated by measuring the CIEL*a*b* colour difference. Data were analysed using IBM SPSS version 23 (p <0.05).RESULTS: There was a poor agreement with the shades selected using conventional and spectrophotometric methods. Inter-examiner and intra-device reliability for both methods were 0.11 and 0.39, respectively. The shades of PFM crowns from the spectrophotometric method were more acceptable to participants than the visual method. (p value=0.002).CONCLUSION: The patient’s acceptance of the shade of the porcelain-fused-to-metal crown was higher in the spectrophotometric shade selection method. The difference in the total colour of the PFM crown from the conventional visual and spectrophotometric methodwas not statistically significant.