A Fully Digital Method to Fabricate Custom Hybrid Ceramic One-Piece Post-and-Core: A Proof of Concept

Digital dentistry has saved time and cost and improved quality control of several dental treatment procedures. This study aimed to describe a fully digital method to fabricate a custom one-piece post-and-core out of hybrid ceramic that do not require the conventional costly and time consuming clinical and laboratory procedures. A post space was prepared in Typodent maxillary second premolar teeth. A direct digital scan for the post space was obtained using the Medit i700 intraoral scanner. The scan was then sent electronically to the CAD/CAM machine for virtual model creation, post-and-core designing and milling out of vita Enamic®. The resulted one-piece post-and-core was then compared to a conventionally-made custom lithium disilicate ceramic post made on the same tooth to verify the successfulness of this new fully digital technique to produce identical outcome to the conventional technique. This study showed that the full digital workflow for fabrication of custom hybrid ceramic one-piece post-and-core can be an acceptable alternative to the conventional methods, thus further advancing digital dentistry.