<![CDATA[Introduction: Cutting edge sharpness of the periodontal sickle scaler instrument will become blunt afterseveral times of usage; thus the sharpening will be required to maintain the instrument’s sharpness of theinstrument. Based on the method used, manual sharpening using a whetstone can be divided into a movinginstrument technique and moving stone technique. The purpose of this study was to analyze the cutting edgeindex of a sickle scaler instrument after being sharpened with two different techniques using an electronmicroscope / SEM. Materials and Methods: Thirty-two new sickle scaler instruments of type H15 / 33(Oshung Inc.) were randomly selected and divided into four groups. The scaler instrument originated fromthe factory was becoming a positive control (Group I); the instrument that has been blunted was becoming anegative control (Group II). The other groups were the blunt sickle scaler that sharpened using the movingstone technique (Group III) and the moving instrument technique (Group IV). The cutting edge index ofall instruments was then analyzed using SEM (JSM 6360LA, JEOL Ltd, Tokyo, Japan). The cutting edgeindex data from the photomicrograph was then processed using the Kruskal-Wallis and the Mann-Whitneystatistical tests. Result: The results showed a significant difference in the sharpness level between the manualsharpening groups; this can be seen from the p-value = 0,000 (p-value < 0.05). The average cutting edgeindex value showed the best results in the moving instrument sharpening technique (2.10), followed by themoving stone sharpening technique (3.10). Conclusion: A periodic sharpening of sickle scaler instrumentsusing a moving instrument technique provides a finer and sharper cutting edge level than the moving stonetechnique.]]>
Copyrights © 2020
