VITA SUPRINITY: THE COOLEST KID IN "BLOCKS"
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.
