Nagy Abdulsamee
Dental caries has been considered as a historically important component of the global oral disease burden. Thus, the quest for an ideal restorative material with optimum physical properties and durability exists. Though amalgam has many known drawbacks, but it has been used for more than a century as a successful restorative material. Many tooth-colored materials, such as composite resins and glass ionomer cements (GICs), have evolved to replace amalgam in the recent past and solved many of amalgam drawbacks but none of them was without drawbacks. New GIC formulations called as Zirconomer and zirconomer improved (white amalgams) are novel materials, composed of ceramic and zirconia reinforced glass ionomer cements that could overcome the drawbacks of previously used amalgam as well as other tooth-colored restorative materials. They exhibit the strength of amalgam and at the same time maintain the unique properties of GICs. The aim of the current work is to present the new zirconomer family regarding their composition, properties, mechanism of zirconia toughening, and clinical cases restored with them.