Six years of clinical experience with an all-ceramic system

The search for tooth-colored and metal-free restorations is one of the major challenges in dental research. For several decades, ceramic has been used as a restorative material because of its aesthetics and stability. Unfortunately, the survival rate of most all-ceramic systems seems unsatisfactory; due to the natural brittleness of ceramic, fractures have been the primary reason for the high failure rate. Since 1988, the University of Zurich Dental School, Switzerland, has been working with the IPS Empress all-ceramic system (Ivoclar/Williams, Amherst, NY). This article reports the clinical and research data from approximately 3,000 all-ceramic restorations.