Investigation of maximum torque values in manual tightening of dental implant healing screws

Abstract

Aims: This study aimed to investigate the change of the maximum torque values applied by the dentist according to the parameters of gender,dental experience and glove type used in the tightening processes applied manually by pre-graduated and post-graduated dentists to the implant superstructure parts. Methods: 24 dentists (11 Male, 13 Female) participated in our study.Participants were instructed to tighten the implant healing screw (Straumann Dental Implant System, Waldenberg, Switzerland) placed on the digital torque measuring device(Cap torque tester series TT01; Mark10, Copiague, NY)by applying maximum force with a manual wrench.Powdered latex gloves,powderfree latex gloves and sterile surgical gloves were made available to the participants in order to imitate the mouth conditions as much as possible.Manual tightening was repeated three times in each group,with at least three minutes duration. Data were recorded digitally and statistical analysis was performed with IBS SPSS statistics 22 program.Independent sample t-test and one-way Anova analysis were used to evaluate differences between groups, followed by the post-hoc Tukey test. Results: Maximum torque value for tightening with powdered latex gloves (20.01±5.55) N, powder free latex gloves (17.27± 4.34) N and surgical gloves (20.27±6.02) N was found.In addition, we did not find a statistically significant difference in terms of gender and dental experience,which are the other parameters we investigated. Conclusion: Gender, experience and glove type do not statistically affect the maximum torque to be applied in implant superstructure applications.