This is the first comparison case I am doing to test a new crown technology. Glidewell Labs has a new type of crown for back teeth made out of zirconia, a high strength ceramic. Like gold crowns, they are virtually unbreakable, don't require a lot of tooth height. Unlike gold crowns, they are tooth colored.

Many people know about 3M's Lava crowns. They are porcelain fused to zirconia. They are beautiful in the front, but they are expensive to produce, and the porcelain is relatively fracture prone. Few problems on front teeth, but using them on high-load molars is risky; I've actually had a couple of them break myself. In every documented case of failure, (I'm talking the published clinical studies) the outer porcelain breaks off, leaving the inner zirconia intact. So the folks at Glidewell decided to make the entire crown out of zirconia.

The benefit is a lower cost, more conservative tooth reduction (dental colleagues, they're claiming 1mm occlusal reduction), and better appearance than a gold crown. The tradeoffs: harder for the dentist to adjust, harder for the dentist to repolish, and poor translucency. (which is why they are meant for back teeth) I decided to ask my friends at Glidewell to make me two crowns: a PFM, the tried and true porcelain fused to metal crown, and a new Bruxzir, the all-zirconia crown.

Here's the photos:

As you can see, the zirconia crowns hold up very well to the PFM crowns that go on 90% of my patients. And compared to a gold crown, they are hugely better. As a matter of fact, this patient chose the zirconia crown. She said it fit like a glove, and she loved the appearance much better. We agree. We're doing another case to confirm our very positive initial findings.