In vitro comparative study on the friction of stainless steel wires with and without Orthospeed® (JAL 90458) on an inclined plane.

BACKGROUND During the treatment of orthodontics, in the mechanics of slide, there takes place friction, which they reduce the slide of the arch across bracket. Therefore, clinical there takes place an increase of the time of treatment. There are different the technologies that try to reduce this friction, as the self-ligating braces. The purpose of this study was to research the in vitro behavior of JAL 90458 as a buffering agent which reduces friction between brackets and stainless steel arch wires of different cross sections and sizes. MATERIAL AND METHODS Three types of stainless steel wires with different cross sections and three types of ligatures were used with and without JAL 90458 to measure the friction according to the time and distance traveled by the brackets on an inclined plane with two angulations. The Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance by ranks was applied to determine the degree of friction between the group using and the group not using the product (P ≤ .05). RESULTS Separate analysis of the arch wires, ligatures and angulation with and without the compound revealed statistically significant differences between the groups, showing that friction was reduced significantly when JAL 90458 was used (P ≤ .01). The 0.021x0.025" arch wires and the arch wires attached using elastic ligatures produce the least resistance to sliding among all of those analyzed when the product was not used (P ≤ .05). CONCLUSIONS The results show that JAL 90458 reduces friction independently of arch wire cross section, type of ligature and angulation of the measuring instrument. KEY WORDS Friction, JAL 90458, arch wires, ligatures, in vitro.