Estudo comparativo da biodistribuição do gálio e do mercúrio de duas ligas metálicas para restauração dentária.

Abstract

Given the controversy that has dogged mercury amalgams since they were first used, other restoration products have been recommended as substitutes. The replacement of mercury with gallium gives of a metal alloy whose advantages in terms of physical and chemical properties, if improved, could dethrone the more current mercury amalgams. There is only one problem; the gallium alloys show less resistance to corrosion and this limits their clinical life. Mercury amalgams have been exhaustively studied and have been used in experimental, and often in clinical, comparative studies with gallium amalgams. Thus, there is no novelty attached to designing a clinical trial to study the corrosion of these latter amalgams since it could simply confirm, or not, the results presented by other authors. This was, indeed, our aim on undertaking this study. However, although studies on the biodistribution of mercury have been carried out on mercury amalgams, we have not found any reference to similar ones being conducted on gallium amalgams. The objective of our animal experimentation has thus been to compare the biodistribution of each metal, both in terms of time and with one another.