Background and Aims: The purpose of this study was to design a new device assisting dental students to measure the tapering of the prepared teeth for fixed crown prosthesis in which the desired tapering for better clinical prognosis could be obtained.
Materials and Methods: The designed device in this study had two arms that were placed on two opposite walls of the prepared teeth. To evaluate the validity and reliability of this device, 3 dies with different degrees (13, 29 and 45°) were used and 20 teeth were prepared by dental students with undefined tapering degrees. The measurements of tapering were performed by six last year-dental students in two different time periods. Comparison of errors in measurements on standard dies between observers and between time intervals were analyzed by (Wilcoxon) Paired t-test with a significance level of α=0.05.
Results: For the three dies used in this study, we compared the differences for each measurement taken by observers with the standard taper of the dies. Maximum difference of measurements with true standard die tapering was 1 degree. A number of 6 measurements were under the true standard tapers and 2 measurements were above it. Interclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC) of the first and second measurements on prepared teeth were 97.4 and 97.5, respectively. There were no significant differences between different observers or two measurements of the same observer in different time intervals (P>0.05).
Conclusion: The results indicated that this device can be valid and reliable for measuring the angle of convergence of the prepared teeth and can be used as an educational device in dental schools as a replacement for previous tapering measurement methods.
