Prevalence of Color Vision Deficiency among Dental Practitioners and its Effect on Shade Matching Ability

Shade selection is a crucial step in achieving aesthetically-pleasing restorations, and it is affected by the dentist’s ability to match the shade of the patient’s teeth. Color Deficiency Disease (CVD) has been thought to be a potential factor affecting color perception. The study aims to find the prevalence of CVD between dentists and dental students and to evaluate its effect on shade matching ability.

A sample of 319 dentists and dental students in the College of Dentistry at Ajman University, Ajman, UAE was examined with the Ishihara test to find the prevalence of CVD. Then participants with CVD were tested for shade matching ability, and were compared to participants with normal color vision with the same gender and qualification level. They were asked to match 10 random composite samples with different shades to a custom shade guide made from the same composite material. A score was calculated, representing the number of correct answers they achieved.

The results showed that 8 out of 143 males (5.6%) had CVD, and 0 out of 176 females had CVD. There was no significant difference in the score of shade matching test between participants with CVD and participants with normal color vision (p=0.075).

Males showed a higher prevalence of color vision deficiency than females. CVD had no significant effect on shade matching ability.