Influence of crown design and material on chipping-resistance of all-ceramic molar crowns: An in vitro study

All-ceramic restorations have become popular and the trend is ongoing. However, the incidence of chipping within the veneering layer has been a commonly reported failure in clinical practice.

The aim of this in vitro study was to evaluate the effect of ceramic crown design (monolithic vs bi-layered) and material on the chipping resistance of molar crowns submitted to compressive cyclic loading.

Fifty identical epoxy resin replicas of a mandibular first molar with crown preparation were divided into 5 groups (n = 10) as follows: the MLD group - monolithic CAD/CAM lithium-disilicate glass-ceramic (LDGC) crowns; 30 zirconia cores were veneered with either feldspathic porcelain by hand-layering technique (ZHL) or by heat-pressing technique (ZVP), or with milled LDGC veneers and subsequently fused to the cores (ZLD); 10 porcelain-fused-to-metal (PFM) crowns acted as a control group. All crowns were cemented using Panavia® F2.0 resin cement (Kuraray Dental, Tokyo, Japan). After storage in water at 37°C for 1 week, the specimens were subjected to compressive cyclic loading at the mesiobuccal cusp which was tilted at 30°. A load cycle of 50-450 N was used and specimens were maintained in an aqueous environment throughout 500,000 cycles in a universal testing machine (Instron, Norwood, USA). The data was statistically analyzed at 5% significant level with Fisher's exact test and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis.

Significant differences in survival rates of the specimens used in the groups (p < 0.001) were found. Specimens of the PFM, ZHL and ZVP groups underwent failures at different stages of the 500,000 fatigue cycles, while specimens of the MLD and ZLD groups survived the entire fatigue test. ZHL and ZVP crowns had the worst chipping-resistance, while PFM crowns performed slightly better. The Kaplan-Meier test revealed significantly higher survival rates for the MLD and ZLD specimens compared to the other 3 groups.

The use of LDGC as a monolithic molar crown and as a veneer over a zirconia core resulted in superior resistance to cuspal chipping.