[A preliminary study on shade matching ability of dental professionals with different background].

PURPOSE: To investigate the difference of shade matching ability of dental professionals with different educational background using toothguide training box (TTB), and provide information for medical esthetics course in dental school. METHODS: Sixty subjects including 20 dental students, 20 prosthodontics technical students and 20 prosthodontics technicians without color blindness were enrolled in this study. Each participant was asked to match 15 standard shade tabs which have been randomly chosen from Vita 3D-Master shade guide. SPSS 17.0 software package was used for data analysis. RESULTS: The scores of dental students, prosthodontics technical students and dental prosthodontics technicians were 834.04+/-51.66, 859.40+/-53.31and 888.36+/-48.54, respectively. There was no significant difference in the sum number of accurate shade matching compared between dental students and prosthodontics technical students (P>0.05), but there was significant difference between dental prosthodontics technicians, prosthodontics technical students (P<0.05), and dental students (P<0.01). CONCLUSIONS: The score of shade matching is significantly different among dental professionals with different background using TTB.