The PLS - 5 second and soft-start protocols did not alter the hardness of the restorations. Moreover, the PLS - 5 second protocol did not alter the marginal adaptation, whereas the soft-start protocol improved marginal adaptation.

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Person test showed a linear positive correlation between the adhesive strength and the hardness measured before and after aging. The use of dual resin cement, combined with a previous application of the adhesive system, is still the safest choice, since it presented high values of bond strength, associated with adequate hardness values, even in apical regions of the root canal.

Objectives This study verified the possibility of cementing fiberglass-reinforced posts using a flowable bulk-fill composite (BF), comparing its push-out bond strength and microhardness with these properties of 3 luting materials. Materials and Methods Sixty endodontically treated bovine roots were used. Posts were cemented using conventional dual-cured cement (CC); self-adhesive cement (SA); dual-cured composite (RC); and BF. Push-out bond strength ( n = 10) and microhardness ( n = 5) tests were performed after 1 week and 4 months of storage. Two-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), 1-way ANOVA, t -test, and Tukey post-hoc tests were applied for the push-out bond strength and microhardness results; and Pearson correlation test was applied to verify the correlation between push-out bond strength and microhardness results (α = 0.05). Results BF presented higher push-out bond strength than CC and SA in the cervical third before aging ( p < 0.01). No differences were found between push-out bond strength before and after aging for all the luting materials ( p = 0.84). Regarding hardness, only SA presented higher values measured before than after aging ( p < 0.01). RC and BF did not present 80% of the maximum hardness at the apical regions. A strong positive correlation was found between the luting materials' push-out bond strength and microhardness ( p < 0.01, R 2 = 0.7912). Conclusions The BF presented comparable or higher push-out bond strength and microhardness than the luting materials, which indicates that it could be used for cementing resin posts in situations where adequate light curing is possible.