Advantages & Disadvantages
Zirconia gained traction in dental restorations because of its strength, wear-resistance, and biocompatibility. When compared with older analog materials, like PFMs, or even newer materials, like IPS e.max, zirconia has clear advantages.
57% of people said the biggest advantage of zirconia was its strength,And then 14% of people said its advantage is versatility,it can be used for a whole bunch, as a crown; for an implant abutment; for a lot of different applications.
The third was wear resistance because it doesn’t really wear away over time, then the fourth was cost,zirconia really has reduced laboratory costs for crowns, just because you can manufacture them relatively inexpensively.
Also,a lack of metal components means that esthetics are improved, and biocompatibility is better.all-ceramic restorations typically have better esthetics than PFMs, some people have sensitivity to metal, so all-ceramic or metal-free is the way to go from a biocompatibility and esthetics perspective.
With the advent of zirconia produced via CNC, technicans now need only click the mouse to do their design digitally, and as the project is on the screen, click buttons and boxes to make things appear, disappear, or adapt. For example, with a click, you can adapt your crown to the contacts perfectly. Secondly, in terms of material selection, zirconia today has dozens of varieties allowing for unprecedented flexibility in adapting to shades. There are hundreds of brands of zirconia on the market, and each can come in several varieties of strength and translucency characteristics. We’ve come a million miles from dead white copings 30 years ago. It can be a daunting task finding a zirconia that works best for your case, but as many people are finding out, once you know what you need from your workflow, it’s a pretty simple process.
Ultimately, the goal is the best-looking, best-performing restoration possible. However, zirconia affords lab professionals the opportunity to easily and consistently provide restorations.
But, Nothing is perfect,so does zirconia,according to professionals, for as good as it is, there is still room for improvement including necessary inventory efforts and high cost.
Zirconia requires high-temperature furnaces (~1500 °C), and attention needs to be paid to maintaining the furnace and using the correct sintering temperature,Saliva contaminations can reduce cementations’ strength if not properly cleaned after try-in. Sandblasting is recommended. It has a lower translucency level than glass ceramics, and properly cemented restorations stick very strongly to the tooth. In case of a clinical need to remove the restoration, some effort is required.
Zirconia is very strong, but only after it is sintered. Before it spends time in the sintering oven, it is very fragile.the fragility and cost of zirconia as a bit of a drawback.
Metal varies daily due to the precious metal market, nonprecious metals, semiprecious metals, and precious metals. They all have different alloys and gold content. They change on price—with the exception of nonprecious metal—daily. With zirconia, you have a fixed cost. Let’s say that a 98-millimeter disc of good quality zirconia, today, sells for about $120. You get about 20 crowns, on average, out of that. So that’s $6 per unit material cost per crown. Just a couple of weeks ago, gold was $1900 an ounce.
Zirconia is relatively low in cost and seems to be getting less expensive every day. This is a benefit to everyone involved—labs have cheaper operating costs, dentists can make more money, and patients don’t have to spend as much.
The Best Type Zirconia to Stock
Today, manufacturers of zirconia differ tremendously in product offerings, primarily due to production processes and powders used,Zirconia can be cold isostatically pressed and can offer yttria stabilizers or erbium-praseodymium stabilizers for a different effect, in terms of color and translucency. These don’t all sinter the same and vary significantly from offering to offering, these things must be taken into consideration when choose new products. You’ve got to give it an honest effort. It’s a science, but there is art to this science with variables all over the place. You can increase sintering temps slightly for better translucencies, and you can switch to a microlayering technique to produce a depth and warmth of color.
How do the lab professionals know the best type, and how much, of zirconia to stock? With so many shades and thickness available, inventory costs can add up quickly. We advises that most labs only need a couple of different types on hand.
There are about 16 VITA shades and 4 bleach shades that might need, and come in all different thicknesses. So, even though there’s 1 diameter, there are 3 or 4 different thicknesses that labs may need to carry.
While it’s a good idea to keep multiple zirconia shades on hand, but with multilayered zirconia options , it allows dental labs to reduce the types of zirconia they need to keep in stock. By adopting multilayered discs of zirconia, a lab can use the same type of zirconia for any area of the mouth and any types of restoration from thin veneers to full-arch, implant-retained bridges.
So we are not having to choose different levels of translucency nor strength. at the end it is a type of an artistry without compromise.
