Fast, accurate, and aesthetic: this is how digital dentistry can be described in just one visit, and it is becoming increasingly popular. Dentsply Sirona has announced their latest step in helping dentists achieve their digital dentistry clinical and practice goals – the launch of a truly aesthetic, high-strength zirconia CAD/CAM block in a bold new partnership with VITA Zahnfabrik. CEREC MTL Zirconia will launch at DS World in Las Vegas, United States, and bring together a high level of aesthetics and ease of processing alongside the strength familiar with zirconium oxide in a multilayer graduated zirconium oxide block. The new material will be available from September 2021.
Dentsply Sirona has helped shape the world of digital dentistry with innovation across multiple imaging and software platforms. This effort has continually sought to respond to the voice of our customers and deliver the tools clinicians need and want to be successful. Specifically, in the CEREC workflow where patients require a restoration, dentists are faced with an important question: “Which material fits best in terms of strength, aesthetics, and processing simplicity?”
Until now, material selection has been limited, particularly in delivering across all three of these vital performance areas. Less than one year ago, Dentsply Sirona began to shift the conversation from compromise to delivering on what is required with the release of CEREC Tessera. CEREC MTL Zirconia continues this conversation, particularly for posterior restorations where zirconia blocks have been critical to success.
CEREC MTL Zirconia is a zirconium oxide enriched with yttrium oxide that leaves virtually nothing to be desired. A key factor in the material developed and produced by VITA Zahnfabrik is the special colour technology consisting of a multilayer colour gradient. This MTL (multi transitional layer) technology, in combination with high translucency, results in very natural aesthetics without compromising on strength. This property turns CEREC MTL Zirconia into genuine innovation and an excellent choice for bridges and crowns as well as for inlays, onlays, and veneers.
While this colour transition visibly improves the aesthetics, the three-point flexural strength of more than 850MPa helps ensure very high strength. This enables minimally invasive crown preparation with a wall thickness as low as 0.6 mm. This strength and wall thickness allows for ideal anatomically designed posterior restorations and gives clinicians more flexibility in the CEREC workflow.
Chairside supply with simple and fast workflow
One of the best parts: Processing is fast and easy. After scanning with CEREC Primescan, which is now twice as fast with the upgrade to CEREC SW 5.2 and creating a finished restoration in five clicks, a crown made of CEREC MTL Zirconia can be milled out in as little as five minutes in the Super Fast mode of CEREC Primemill. Subsequent sintering in CEREC SpeedFire takes around 18-21 minutes, and the optional glaze firing can be completed after just nine minutes1. With conventional cementation as the finishing step, CEREC MTL Zirconia will quickly become the CAD/CAM block of choice for posterior restorations.
The first users of CEREC MTL Zirconia expressed great satisfaction with the new material and praised above all the uncompromising path to remarkable aesthetics.
“It is very rare for a material and workflow to come along that changes the way you practice. There are things that make you more efficient, but the advent of chairside aesthetic zirconia has changed the way I do things in my office,” reported Dr Mike Skramstad from Orono (Maine, United States). “CEREC MTL is the pinnacle of what I am looking for in a chairside zirconia. High strength, aesthetic, cementable, and low minimal thickness design not only make the execution of the restoration easy, but the efficiency, fit, and workflow has simply changed everything for me.”
Comprehensive materials portfolio for CEREC restorations
Dentsply Sirona’s block portfolio for CEREC restorations includes glass-ceramics (CEREC Tessera) as well as various zirconium oxide blocks (CEREC Zirconia+) and is now completed by a true multi-talent for restoring teeth in different regions of the mouth.
“With CEREC MTL Zirconia, we are rounding off our CAD/CAM block portfolio of glass-ceramic and zirconia blocks with an esthetic zirconium oxide,” explained Mathias Kraus, vice-president of Restorative Marketing/Single-Unit Crown at Dentsply Sirona. “In this way, the highest demands of patients in terms of strength and esthetics can be met simultaneously.”
CEREC MTL Zirconia is the result of a collaboration between VITA and Dentsply Sirona.
“With this innovation, we have succeeded in ideally combining the requirements for maximum aesthetics, ease of processing, and familiar strength,” explained Bernd Schnakenberg, head of Global Sales and Marketing at VITA.
While VITA is the designer and producer of this new MTL zirconium oxide block, Dentsply Sirona with Degudent GmbH, Hanau, will be responsible for the exclusive global distribution.
1 Internal data from Dentsply Sirona
