Marginal and internal fit of all-ceramic CAD/CAM crown-copings on chamfer preparations

Evaluation of the marginal and internal fit of all-ceramic molar crown-copings hypothesizing that Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) fabrication shows the same accuracy of fit as conventional techniques. A set of six individual crown preparations was duplicated 12 times yielding 72 plaster dies. Slip-cast (In-Ceram Zirconia), heat-pressing (Empress II) and CAD/CAM crown-copings (Cerec inLab, DCS, Decim and Procera) were seated on 12 dies each. Marginal and internal gap width was measured in the SEM at 120x magnification. Marginal gap of slip-cast (25 +/- 18 microm) was significantly (P < 0.05) smaller than that of Empress II (44 +/- 23 microm) copings. Procera (17 +/- 16 microm) and Decim (23 +/- 17 microm) did not differ (P > 0.05) from slip-cast (25 +/- 18 microm) but were smaller (P < 0.001/P < 0.01) than Empress II (44 +/- 23 microm) and Cerec inLab (43 +/- 23 microm) (P < 0.001/P < 0.05). DCS (33 +/- 20 microm) did not differ (P > 0.05) from any of the others. The internal mid-orobuccal gap width of Procera (136 +/- 68 microm) was larger (P < 0.001) than that of Decim (81 +/- 30 microm) and slip-cast (94 +/- 84 microm) (P < 0.05) while Empress II (105 +/- 53 microm), DCS (110 +/- 79 microm) and Cerec inLab (114 +/- 58 microm) did not differ significantly (P > 0.05) from Decim, Procera and slip-cast. Internal mesiodistal gap width was similar. The fit of conventional and CAD/CAM all-ceramic molar crown-copings covered the same range of gap width confirming the assumed hypothesis.