Effect of fatigue testing on core integrity and post microleakage of teeth restored with different post systems.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a new nondestructive test system, which could test concurrently fatigue and microleakage. Fifty, single-rooted teeth were restored with one of the following posts systems and a composite core: titanium ParaPost cemented with zinc phosphate cement; CosmoPost; C-Post; Esthetic C-Post; and FibreKor post, all cemented with resin cement. Samples were embedded and placed in a positioning jig. They were impacted at 45 degrees to the long axis of the tooth with a force of 55 N at a frequency of 3 Hz for a total of 100,000 impacts. After 60,000 impacts, samples were thermocycled. Core integrity and post microleakage were evaluated periodically throughout the 100,000 impacts. Samples showed no detectable displacement of any of the cores, but the metallic group showed a statistically significant increase in microleakage (p < 0.05) at the conclusion of the study compared with the nonmetallic groups.