Zirkolith ® Implants: Two-Piece & Tapered All-Zirconia Implants

This topic of "metal-free" has been discussed in the past on this website and your comment is not entirely correct. Readers should refer to this link: http://www.osseonews.com/are-zirconium-restorations-really-metal-free/. Another interesting post can be found here: http://www.ceraroot.com/2011/02/zirconium-metal-or-ceramic/ -Then you can head over to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zirconium_dioxide - there are also many other resources people can consult. Suffice to say - Zirconia and Zirconium are different terms. Zirconia, which is what these implants are made of, is a ceramic. Is salt a metal because Sodium is a metal?

To follow up: In case anyone is interested in the chemistry of Ceramics, this is a good read: http://www.chemistryexplained.com/Bo-Ce/Ceramics.html - the point basically is that even if chemically ceramics are composed of metallic and nonmetallic elements, ceramics are considered nonmetallic by definition. It's kind of like the fact that humans share 95%+ of our genome with a mice, so does that make a human a mouse? I guess one could go on forever arguing whether there are semantic differences between saying something is metal-free vs nonmetallic, but it's not really productive or relevant really. These zirconia implants are ceramic, and not metal, and hence quite different than the metal titanium implants.

Table salt isn't a metal, nor is it "metal-free."

This is moot point. Technically, of course there is a metallic element, in many ceramics. But, a ceramic is not a metal. Perhaps these companies should have called their implants, nonmetallic implants, but I don't think it sounds as good from a marketing perspective; the word free is the most powerful word in marketing. Nevertheless, personally for me, if a material is not a metal, then saying it is metal free is basically equivalent.

Its interesting how passionate people get about this issue. Zirconium is a metal and zirconium dioxide is a moncrystalline ceramic also called zirconia. The same applies to Alumina, Yttria and even Titania which are oxides of transitional metals. Those oxides are crystalline and ceramic. Now the zirconia implants are made of zirconia, yttria and alumina and the proper name is Yttria stabilized tetraragonal zirconia, which by virtue of its content and manufacturing process is a polycrystalline bioceramic. You also have another formulation of zirconia implants like that of SDS implants which are made of Alumina Toughened Zirconia (ATZ) which is also a ceramic. The tetragonal stage is actually on step before the cubic stage and the last time I checked cubic zirconia was not a metal. Ceramic implantology is here to stay and unfortunately for some will not go away. In Europe it is growing very fast and the last time I checked there are 16 metal free implant manufacturers one of which is Straumann. So to all my implantologists colleagues change is already on the way, patients are aware and belive in these implants, and what bothers me the most is when they come to my office they have done their homework and they sometimes deplore the fact that so many of us unwittingly refuse to even admit the possibility of ceramic metal free implants. In closing why is it so easy to admit a bruxir zirconia crown is ceramic but oppose so much uneducated resistance to the fact that a zirconia implant is a ceramic. I just smh

The issue of aging has been in my estimation 95% solved because of the polycrystalline structure of the modern ceramic implant. The iriginal ones were zirconia only and did not fare well in the wet environment. We are conducting a comparative aging study and results will be available and published by the end of 2016. Stay tuned.