Abstract
Objective: Shade selection is a crucial step in achieving aesthetically-pleasing restorations, and it is affected by the dentist’s ability to match the shade of the patient’s teeth. Color Deficiency Disease (CVD) has been thought to be a potential factor affecting color perception. The study aims to find the prevalence of CVD between dentists and dental students and to evaluate its effect on shade matching ability. Methods: A sample of 319 dentists and dental students in the College of Dentistry at Ajman University, Ajman, UAE was examined with the Ishihara test to find the prevalence of CVD. Then participants with CVD were tested for shade matching ability, and were compared to participants with normal color vision with the same gender and qualification level. They were asked to match 10 random composite samples with different shades to a custom shade guide made from the same composite material. A score was calculated, representing the number of correct answers they achieved. Results: The results showed that 8 out of 143 males (5.6%) had CVD, and 0 out of 176 females had CVD. There was no significant difference in the score of shade matching test between participants with CVD and participants with normal color vision (p=0.075). Conclusion: Males showed a higher prevalence of color vision deficiency than females. CVD had no significant effect on shade matching ability.
Highlights
Dental appearance is an important characteristic in defining the attractiveness of the face, and a person’s smile has psychological importance and plays a key role in human social interactions
The results showed that 8 males out of 143 (5.6%) were with Color Vision Deficiency (CVD), and no females were found with CVD
The results showed that participants with normal color vision (n=40) had an average test score of 7.75 when matching the shade of the random composite samples to the custom shade guide, while the participants with CVD (n=7) had an average of 5.14
Summary
Dental appearance is an important characteristic in defining the attractiveness of the face, and a person’s smile has psychological importance and plays a key role in human social interactions. There are some significant aspects affecting overall dental appearance like tooth color, position and shape, quality of restorations and the general arrangement of the dentition, specially of the anterior teeth [1, 2]. Color Vision Deficiency (CVD) is a common defect of the human eyes, that affect the perception of color. It occurs due to missing one or more of the three groups of color cones cells, which are located within the retina of the eye, and these cones are mainly sensitive to red, green, and blue colors [16 - 19]. The third category is called Anomalous Trichromatism, where subjects are sensitive to all three hues [19 - 22]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
