Zirconia Crowns vs Porcelain

Dental crowns are a tooth-like cap that is used to cover restoring its shape, strength size thus improving its appearance. The commonly used crowns are zirconia and  porcelain or ceramic crowns. To give you a better understanding about them, here’s a comparative information between zirconia crowns vs porcelain.

Zirconia is a metal in the titanium family and is known to be very durable making it ideal to making of dental crown especially the posterior region which is used for technical purposes such as chewing and grinding of food. While porcelain is a kind of ceramic that is built by stacking and firing. These crowns are used mostly by people who are allergic to metals.

Further information between zirconia crowns vs porcelain are as follows;

Zirconia crowns have various advantages over porcelain including;

• They’re less costly since it doesn’t require to be outsourced from an outside dental lab.
• They’re less time consuming as compared to putting porcelain crowns.
•  They’re more durable.
• However, Zirconia crowns have few disadvantages including;
• They’re not transparent or have the natural tooth-like color and thus they’re less appealing to patients.
• Some patients show an allergic reaction to them. Since the metal used are a mixture of metals.

On the other hand porcelain crowns also have various advantages over Zirconia crowns such as;

• They’re translucent which makes them naturally and aesthetically appealing.
• They show no allergic reactions and are highly biocompatible.
• The alignment and correction of the crowns are possible.
• They’re ideal for patients who have spaces inside their mouth and are looking for a natural tooth-like look.

However, porcelain crowns also have disadvantages such as;

• They’re less durable
• They’re expensive
• The crown is easily chipped
• They’re time-consuming when fitting in the tooth since preparation takes time.

Both crowns have a similar fitting procedure which involves cleaning of the tooth, reshaping and treatment preparation. Both may develop problems such as;

• Discomfort or sensitivity
• Loose crown due to the washing off of the cement under the crown
• Crown may also fall off due to decaying of the underlying tooth.