Wear of monolithic zirconia against different CAD-CAM and indirect restorative materials

Statement of problem. The wear of monolithic zirconia against enamel has been widely studied, but how zirconia affects different opposing restorative materials is not clear.Purpose. The purpose of this in vitro study was to investigate the depth of wear and volumetric loss of different restorative materials opposed by monolithic zirconia.Material and methods. Sixty-six O10x3-mm specimens (n=11) were fabricated from monolithic zirconia, zirconia reinforced ceramic, lithium disilicate ceramic, feldspathic ceramic, ORMOCER, and ceramic optimized polymer. A 2-body pin-on-disk wear test was performed by using monolithic zirconia pins. The specimens were scanned with a noncontact profilometer after the tests. The scan parameters were a frame size area of 1.5x1.5 mm, frequency of 400 Hz, and scan sensitivity of 2 gm. After the evaluation of depth and volume loss, the specimens were analyzed with a scanning electron microscope. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to analyze the differences in wear values across the specimen groups, and pairwise comparison tests were performed with a post hoc test (a=.05). Results. Maximum depth of wear was 257.55 +/- 18.88 gm for lithium disilicate ceramic, 295.36 +/- 14.46 gm for zirconia reinforced ceramic, 421.82 +/- 214.49 gm for ORMOCER, 333.73 +/- 79.09 gm for ceramic optimized polymer, 146.27 +/- 22.86 gm for feldspathic ceramic, and 41.55 +/- 5.04 gm for monolithic zirconia. The depth of wear was not significantly different among lithium disilicate, zirconia-reinforced ceramic, ORMOCER, and ceramic optimized polymer (P<.05). However, the depth of wear of monolithic zirconia and feldspathic ceramic was less than that of other materials (P<.001). Volume loss of lithium disilicate was 1.68 +/- 0.25 mm3, 1.08 +/- 0.35 mm3 for zirconia reinforced ceramic, 4.29 +/- 2.91 mm3 for ORMOCER, 2.46 +/- 0.63 mm3 for resin ceramic, 1.07 +/- 0.09 mm3 for feldspathic ceramic, and 0.19 +/- 0.02 mm3 for monolithic zirconia. Feldspathic ceramic and monolithic zirconia had significantly less volume loss than the other groups (P<.001), and the difference between them for volume loss was statistically insignificant (P>.05).Conclusions. The tested ceramic-based materials had favorable wear resistance compared with the tested composite resinebased ones. However, the ceramics tended to crack formation than the composite resins. (J Prosthet Dent 2022;128:505-11)