Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare 3 veneering ceramics for zirconia frameworks regarding color stability and predictability of the esthetic result.
Materials and methods: Six patients with 1 maxillary central incisor to be restored were enrolled in the study. The contralateral incisor had to be nonrestored and vital to serve as a reference tooth. For each patient, 4 single crowns with zirconia frameworks were fabricated. Three veneering ceramics were assessed and masked to eliminate bias. Choice of the veneering ceramics was done at random. The veneering was performed by 4 dental technicians. Three veneering ceramics were compared: ceramic A (Initial, GC), ceramic B (Triceram, Esprident), and ceramic C (Cercon Ceram S, DeguDent). The color of the crowns and reference teeth was captured using spectrophotometric analysis (SpectroShade, MHT), and the color difference (deltaE) was calculated (objective method). In addition, the crowns and reference teeth were compared subjectively by 11 observers blind to the ceramic used for veneering. Statistical analysis was performed with analysis of variance (ANOVA).
Results: Regardless of the veneering ceramic used, all crowns showed a high color deviation from the reference teeth when applying the objective analysis (deltaE(A) 6.8 +/- 2.5, deltaE(B) 5.6 +/- 1.2, deltaE(C) 5.7 +/- 2.1). In addition, no significant differences were found between the deltaE of crowns and teeth for the 3 ceramics. In the framework-supported area, ceramic B showed a significantly lower difference in value (deltaL) compared to the reference teeth than the other 2 ceramics (deltaL(A) 4.9 +/- 2.3, deltaL(B) 1.1 +/- 2.1, deltaL(C) 4.1 +/- 1.5; P < .01 ANOVA). When performing the subjective analysis, ceramic B was chosen as the best match by a majority of observers (> 60%) in 4 of 6 patients.
Conclusions: All 3 ceramics met the esthetic demands only to a limited extent. Ceramic B allowed for the most predictable result in terms of color stability.