Ceramic materials are widely used for biomedical applications because of their remarkable biological and mechanical properties.\nComposites made of alumina and zirconia are particularly interesting owing to their higher toughness with respect to themonolithic\nmaterials. On this basis, the present study is focused on the in vivo behavior of alumina toughened zirconia (ATZ) dental implants\ntreated with a hydrothermal process. A minipig model was implemented to assess the bone healing through histology and mRNA\nexpression at different time points (8, 14, 28, and 56 days). The novel ATZ implant was compared to a titanium clinical standard.\nThe implants were analyzed in terms of microstructure and surface roughness before in vivo tests. The most interesting result deals\nwith a statistically significant higher digital histology index for ATZ implants with respect to titanium standard at 56 days, which\nis an unprecedented finding, to the authors� knowledge. Even if further investigations are needed before proposing the clinical use\nin humans, the tested material proved to be a promising candidate among the possible ceramic dental implants.
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