RESUMO
Dental practice can produce and spread some infetious diseases from patients to dentist, dental assistant, and dental labors. One possible method for preventing these cross-contamination is to immerse dental impression in chemical disinfectants. So far many investigators studied on the dimensional changes of dental impressions and on the surface qualities of stone casts made from impression following immersion in disinfectants. This study was proposed to evaluate some popular impression/disinfectant combination from the point of dimensional stability. Impression was taken from dental arch-shaped metal model. Irreversible hydrocolloid and 3 elastomers(polyvinyl siloxane, polysulfide, polyether) were immersed in 3 disinfectants (2% glutaraldehyde, 1% povidone-iodine, 0.5% sodium hypochlorite) for 10 minutes and measured both cross-arch and anterior-posterior distance under stereo microscope to evaluate dimensional change. The results obtained were as follows: 1. Dimensional changes of irreversible hydrocolloid impression was statistically different in crossarch and anterior-posterior distance when immersed in 2% glutaraldehyde solution and in anterior-posterior distance when immersed in 0.5% sodium hypochlorite solution from control group(p0.05). 3. Dimensional changes of polyether impression was statistically different in cross-arch distance when immersed in 0.5% sodium hypochlorite solution and in anterior-posterior distance when immersed in 1% povidone-iodine solution from control group (p<0.05). 4. In all cases, dimensional changes were less than 0.1% from the original dimension and concluded clinically acceptable