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Tooth whitening has grown as one of the most requested dental procedures as the public continuously demands whiter smiles for appearance enhancement. This demand resulted in many options of home-based products (toothpastes, films, gels) and in-office-based products based on concentrated bleaching agents (typically hydrogen peroxide and carbamide peroxide) to be applied under professional supervision. However, protocols involving bleaching agents may increase tooth demineralization, tooth-surface roughening/softening, as well as degradation of dental restorations. Violet illumination alone has been proposed as an alternative to reduce tooth sensitivity while keeping desired whitening effects. In this study, we assessed the effectiveness of whitening treatments using violet illumination (VI) alone or combined with 35% hydrogen peroxide (HP) gel, as well as cleaning teeth with and without mineral oil. This assessment was performed by calculating whiteness and yellowness indexes based on the color change for the experimental groups: control, VI alone (VI group), VI with 35% HP gel (VI + HP group), violet illumination without 35% HP gel and cleaned with mineral oil before washing (VI + HP + oil group). All procedures were performed in 16 bovine teeth (1) stored in 5% thymol solution immediately after extraction, (2) subsequently cleaned and (3) stained with instant coffee solution for 24 hours (except by the control group). Our results suggested that the VI + gel whitening treatment was able to completely restore the teeth whiteness while lowering its yellowness by 31.2% compared to the control group. The VI + oil treatment was 3.7 times more effective in increasing whiteness and decrease yellowness compared to VI treatment. The performance of whitening treatments could potentially be increased by cleaning the tooth surface with mineral oil. The VI + gel treatment should be recommended against coffee stains and potentially investigated for stain types in future research.
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