Wear resistance of 3D-printed materials: A systematic review

Abstract

Background: The increase of 3D printing and the use of additive manufacturing in dentistry has brought various new materials to the market. An assessment of these materials’ wear resistance is lacking. Purpose: This review's aim is to sum up the data regarding the wear resistance of 3D-printed materials and to compare it to those of other materials available for use in dentistry. Material and methods: We conducted PubMed (MEDLINE), Embase (via Ovid) and Cochrane Library searches, supported by manual searching, to collect available studies during the years 2011 to 2021. For PubMed, we used the following Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms: “3D AND printing AND wear AND dentistry AND antagonist.” For the other databases, we chose “3D AND dentistry AND wear” to identify as many studies as possible, considering the low amount of data. Results: After setting the filters and deleting the duplicates, we identified 76 studies. In the end, we considered 7 studies eligible for this review. Significant differences appeared among the 3D-printed materials. Nevertheless, they performed well, better than the conventional materials, in terms of wear resistance. All included studies demonstrated a low risk of bias. Conclusion: In terms of wear resistance, 3D-printed materials show promising results compared to conventional materials. Nevertheless, further in vitro and in vivo studies are required to verify the suitability of these new materials.

Keywords

• Dentistry
• CAD/CAM
• 3D printing
• Additive manufacturing
• Wear resistance
• Material