Relationship between Reflectivity, Chemical Composition and Mechanical Behaviour of Orthodontic Bonding Nanofiller Resin Materials: A Proposal of an Alternative Method of Investigation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Dear Authors,

The revised version is improved a lot and I have no further questions . 

Author Response

The authors thank the Reviewer for his valuable comment.
Furthermore, as He kindly emphasized, the authors confirm their great commitment to implement their work in the best possible way and thank Him very much for appreciating all their efforts.

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

This paper, presented the relationship between reflectivity, chemical composition and mechanical behaviour of three orthodontic bonding nanofiller resins materials, investigated in vitro, for internal material composition interpretation, thus obtaining information on mechanical behaviours.

The topic is clearly relevant in the field of study. In my opinion, the paper is well structured and the methodology are clearly explained and proper to the results and conclusions obtained. The results are clear and well explained.

However, I have the following remarks to this paper:

·       It is important that the authors emphasis the novelty of their work.

·       The conclusions should be more briefly punted in the obtained results.  

Author Response

The authors thank the Reviewer for his valuable comment.
Furthermore the authors thank the Reviewer for his first suggestion and agree with him emphasizing in the introduction, discussion and conclusions sections the novelty of their study, which consists precisely in evaluating and demonstrating the potentiality of UV-Vis spectrophotometry as a useful tool for extrapolating not only optical but also compositional information in orthodontic bonding composites.
Finally, the authors also thank the Reviewer for his second valuable suggestion and reformulate the conclusions section with more briefly punctuated information on the results of their study.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Congratulations on the job you have done and presented in this manuscript. It is a interesting study and I believe it can be published after some minor modifications. Please add some images of your methodology to increase the visibility of your work. As it is now the article looks a little bit too short. Also try to add some more information in the results section, make a comparation between study groups or increase the sample number, again it looks very short as it is now. Please see the attachment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The authors thank the Reviewer for valuable suggestions. Fully adhering to what the He recommended, they were able to expand and improve the manuscript, slightly increasing the number of samples, adding a further in vitro investigation (the FIB/SEM analysis), new images, thus also implementing the results, discussion and conclusion sections.

The authors again thank the Reviewer the corrections requested in the attachment and confirm that they have made all of them, in particular:

The grammar errors reported in the abstract test have been corrected;

References 1-4 have been correctly referred;

New images have been added in the Materials and Methods section;

Lines 105 to 109 have been moved to the discussion section, while lines 103 -104 have been left in the results section.

the Informed Consent Statement section have been correct;

A greater number and above all more recent bibliographic references have been included in the References section.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

We did you use 4mm thick samples? you wanted to replicate a condition as  close as possible to the clinical situations, why you did not use thinner samples?

please add limitations section

I would like to recommend to cite this article if you found it useful:

Szalewski, L.; Kamińska, A.; Wallner, E.; Batkowska, J.; Warda, T.; Wójcik, D.; Borowicz, J. Degradation of a Micro-Hybrid Dental Composite Reinforced with Polyaramide Fiber under the Influence of Cyclic Loads. Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 7296. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10207296

Author Response

Reviewer 2

Dear authors,

We did you use 4mm thick samples? you wanted to replicate a condition as  close as possible to the clinical situations, why you did not use thinner samples?

The authors thank the reviewer for the question which gave them the opportunity to add considerations, regarding the thickness of the samples, added in the discussion section lines 210-227. Mainly, however, they wanted to use samples of this size in order to be able to relate what was observed in this study, with another study previously conducted by them which considered resin samples of the same size and which is referred to in the Discussion section and with the Reference 33.

please add limitations section

The authors thank the reviewer for the suggestion and add the limit of their study in lines 303-310 of the discussion section.

The authors are aware that the tests were carried out in laboratory conditions and do not perfectly reflect the conditions in the oral cavity  (The authors..)  nevertheless, the demonstrated differentiation indicates the validity of further research in this direction.

I would like to recommend to cite this article if you found it useful:

 

Szalewski, L.; Kamińska, A.; Wallner, E.; Batkowska, J.; Warda, T.; Wójcik, D.; Borowicz, J. Degradation of a Micro-Hybrid Dental Composite Reinforced with Polyaramide Fiber under the Influence of Cyclic Loads. Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 7296. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10207296

The authors thank the reviewer of the board and use the content of the article mentioned to expand the discussion, lines 228-231 and, insert it in the references section at number 25.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

The submitted text, although it contains some practically useful research results, is not of significant scientific value.

1. The content of the work does not fully correlate with its title, as the authors put forward a thesis about the relationship between the optical properties of the studied materials and their mechanical properties. This relationship is derived not from the authors' own research, but from very loosely cited and limited literature sources.

2. The thesis about the relationship between the optical properties of composites for orthodontic applications and their mechanical properties can be proved by the correlation analysis of the data obtained in the authors' own research. Of course, data from other authors may be used, if such data is available.

3. In fact, the study concludes that reflectivity may be a predictor of mechanical properties as if they do not need to be studied anymore.

4. It is only partially correct to say that the mechanical properties of orthodontic composites depend on the packing density (content) of the fillers. In fact, the problem is much more complex, because the mechanical strength of these materials depends not only on the filler content but also on e.g. their size (more precisely - particle size distribution), their type (material), the type of resins used and the type of binding agent between fillers and resin.

To sum up, in my opinion, the submitted work is not eligible for publication.

Author Response

Please find in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

Despite the significant redrafting of the text, the authors still have not provided numerical results supporting the theses put forward in the paper. Therefore, the objections raised in the review are still valid, which, in my opinion, does not allow for further processing of the publication process.