Zirconia bioceramics in dental implantology: rationale, clinical outcomes and applications
Metal Free Ceramic Dental Implants
Ceramics have been able to adapt and keep up with the ever changing needs in dentistry and like many other materials and technologies they have been adopted from engineering and modified to solve clinical challenges. However the inherent brittleness, low flexural strength, fracture toughness of conventional glass and alumina ceramics have been the main obstacle for their extensive use. The discovery of ceramic oxides broadened the range of application of ceramics in dentistry and dental implantology in particular. The last decade has been one where we have witnessed an “explosion” in the use of zirconia in dentistry. Along with this phenomenon the manufacturing protocols and advanced formulas of zirconia have been created which have led to zirconia becoming a stable, biocompatible, bioinert and structurally stable implant material. Today in dental implantology there are two main zirconia ceramic implant biomaterials namely Yttria Stabilized Tetragonal Zirconia (Y-TZP) and Alumina Toughened Zirconia (ATZ).
This presentation will cover zirconia as an implantable bioceramic, the rationale and the indications and benefits of metal free teeth replacement. Clinical cases completed with zirconia dental implants and prosthetics will also be presented.