Vita has hit a home run with this material! Vita Suprinity: a high strength (541 MPa), zirconia-reinforced glass ceramic. What is the deal with this material? Is it a gimmick, here to stay, a real player in same day dentistry? We have been playing with this material off and on in our office for a few months now waiting for the right case to document and share our thoughts. That time has come and here is the run down!
Suprinity is a zirconia-reinforced glass ceramic (lithium silicate). Vita has put about 10 wt% of zirconia in this lithium silicate material. The esthetics of this material are achieved with excellent translucency. It can be used from anterior crowns to posterior crowns, inlays and onlays, veneers and implant suprastructures. There are a number of shades offered and two translucency levels (T = Translucent and HT = High Translucent). Prepping recommendations are 1.5 mm wall thickness, 1.5 mm in the cusp areas, and 1.0 mm in the fissure area for posterior teeth.
We had the opportunity to replace an old PFM with recurrent decay on the lingual of #14. The patient has an implant crown on #13 that needs replacing but was not interested in doing it at this time. We cut the old crown off #14 and re-prepped the tooth as indicated for the suprinity block. We scanned the prep with the Cerec Primescan and designed our new crown. Once everything was dialed in with the Primescan we sent the design to the MCXL for milling. The milling time was the same as Emax, about 12 minutes for this particular tooth.
Once the block was finished milling and we tried it in, we realized that we could see my prep through the crown! No kidding, you can see the prep! How cool is that? What better way to assess the fit of a crown than actually seeing the preparation margins and the crown together. This is a really neat feature of this material and whether it was designed purposeful or whether it’s just the natural structure of this material, it is way cool.
Once we verified the marginal fit, contacts and the occlusion were spot on, we polished it with the Vita Suprinity technical kit. As with any zirconia material always remember light pressure and slower speeds to avoid the pearling.
We gave it a nice polish and placed on a metal peg along with the honeycomb wafer for the furnace. Suprinity is stable enough where it does not have to have peg material to support the margins. The firing time on this material is about 25 minutes (which is the biggest draw back in my opinion). We chose not to glaze or stain this crown so we can see what the polished material looks like straight out of the oven. We prepared the crown for cementation just like Emax. The crown looks great in the mouth and fits wonderfully. We just need to get the patient to re-do the implant crown on #13 and she should be good to go for a while.
We really like this material and think it has excellent characteristics from preparation design to strength (541 MPa for Vita Suprinity compared to 500 MPa for Emax). The biggest drawback I could see from heavy CAD/CAM users is the firing time. Other than this little inconvenience, I see it as a major player in same day dentistry. Personally, the fact I can see through the material before processing is really cool to me and the color after firing without manipulation of stain or glaze makes this an awesome addition to any chairside restoration. Bottom line is you should give it a whirl and see what you think. Material science has put the petal to the metal for all of us, branch out and have fun!
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