Effect of glutaraldehyde and microwave disinfection on dimensional accuracy of 2 commercially available heat cured denture bases

Infectious diseases have become a major concern in the health care fields. Recent increase in incidence of diseases such as hepatitis-B and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) has lead to a significant change in attitude towards the importance of cross infection control in dentistry. It has been reported contaminated prosthesis can transfer microorganisms to prosthesis, materials, equipment, personnel, and patients and can establish a cross contamination cycle. To avoid this, there is a need to establish a disinfection protocol that is effective, clinically viable, inexpensive, and easy to comply with and which should not have physical, mechanical and chemical effect on denture base resin. Routinely, chemical method of disinfecting denture materials is used which includes use of sodium hypochlorite, Glutaraldehyde and chlorine dioxide. Recently, use of microwave energy has been suggested as a simple alternative to prosthesis disinfection with lower operational cost, ease of use, requires no special storage, has no expiration date and doesn’t induce resistance to Candida albicans. It has been reported that both the methods are effective in prosthesis disinfection but their effect on dimensional accuracy of denture base resin is still controversial. So the purpose of this study is to evaluate and compare the effect of Glutaraldehyde and microwave disinfection on dimensional accuracy of two commercially available heat polymerized denture base resins.