Marginal Fit, Mechanical Properties, and Esthetic Outcomes of CAD/CAM Interim Fixed Dental Prostheses (FDPs): A Systematic Review

This systematic review aimed to study the outcomes of CAD-CAM (milled and 3D-printed) interim dental prostheses when compared to conventional ones. The focused question of “In natural teeth, what are the outcomes of CAD-CAM interim FDPs compared to the conventionally-manufactured ones regarding marginal fit, mechanical properties, esthetics, and color stability” was formulated. The systematic search was conducted electronically in the PubMed/MEDLINE, CENTRAL, EMBASE, Web of Science, New York Academy of Medicine Grey Literature Report, and Google Scholar databases by using the MeSH keywords and keywords associated with the focused question and limiting articles to those published between 2000 and 2022. A manual search was conducted in selected dental journals. The results were analyzed qualitatively and are presented in table format. Of the included studies, 18 studies were in vitro and 1 was a randomized clinical trial. Of the eight studies analyzing the mechanical properties, five studies favored the milled interim restorations, one study favored both 3D-printed and milled interim restorations, and two studies reported better mechanical properties in conventional interim restorations. Among four studies evaluating the marginal discrepancies, two studies favored the marginal fit in milled interim restorations, one study reported a better marginal fit in both milled and 3D-printed interim restorations, and one study found conventional interim restorations have a better marginal fit and smaller marginal discrepancy when compared to both milled and 3D-printed restorations. Among five studies that evaluated both the mechanical properties and marginal fit, 1 study favored 3D-printed interim restorations and four studies favored milled interim restorations over the conventional ones. Two studies analyzing the esthetics outcomes demonstrated better results with milled interim restorations compared to conventional and 3D-printed interim restorations in terms of their color stabilities. The risk of bias was low for all the studies reviewed. The high level of heterogeneity within the studies excluded meta-analysis. Most of the studies favored the milled interim restorations over the 3D-printed and conventional restorations. The results suggested that milled interim restorations offer a better marginal fit, higher mechanical properties, and better esthetic outcomes in terms of color stabilities.