effects of chlorhexidine and sodium hypochlorite on the setting time of calcium-enriched mixture cement

i ntroduction: the aim of the present study was to evaluate whether adding 2% chlorhexidine (chx) and 2.6% sodium hypochlorite (naocl) to calcium-enriched mixture (cem) cement would affect its setting time (st), or not. methods and materials: in this study, the setting time of cem cement was evaluated in three groups ( n =9) as follows: group 1; cem cement, group 2; cem cement+2% chx and group 3; cem cement+2.6% naocl. then the mean values of st were calculated and the kolmogorov-smirnov test was used to evaluate the normal distribution of data. the kruskal-wallis and mann-whitney u tests were used for statistical analysis. statistical significance was set at 0.05. results: the mean st for groups 1, 2 and 3 were 105, 120 and 220 min, respectively. there was a significant increase in the duration of st in group 3 (naocl) in comparison with the two other groups ( p <0.05). conclusion: naocl significantly increased the st of cem cement, whereas chlorhexidine did not alter the st. keywords: calcium-enriched mixture; cem cement; chlorhexidine; setting time; sodium hypochlorite