Luting of ceramic crowns with a self-adhesive cement: Effect of contamination on marginal adaptation and fracture strength

Objectives: This study evaluated the percentages of continuous margins (%CM) and fracture strength (FS) of crowns made out from blocs of leucite-reinforced ceramic (IPS Empress CAD) and luted with a representative self-adhesive cement (RelyX Unicem) under four contaminating agents: saliva, water, blood, a haemostatic solution containing aluminium chloride (pH= 0.8) and a control group with no contamination. Study Design: %CM at both tooth-cement (TC) and cement-crown (CC) interfaces were determined before and after a fatigue test consisting of 600’000 chewing loads and 1’500 temperature cycles changing from 5º C to 50º C. Load to fracture was recorded on fatigued specimens. Kruskal-Wallis t…