Are your teeth weak, discolored, or broken? If yes, then your dentist may recommend placing crowns on your teeth. A crown works like a cap, covering the visible part of a tooth to make it stronger and improve its appearance. Here is some information about dental crowns.
What Crowns Do
Crowns can treat a lot of problems with your teeth, including:
- Broken Teeth: If your teeth are weak, crowns can help protect them. Additionally, crowns can restore broken teeth or hold together the parts of a cracked tooth.
- Filling Problems: If one of your teeth needs a large filling but there is not enough of the tooth left to hold it, a crown can cover and support the tooth and filling.
- Root Canal: Crowns can protect a tooth that has been treated with a root canal.
- Dental Restorations: A crown can hold bridges in place and cover dental implants.
- Appearance: The appearance of stained or badly shaped teeth can be improved with the use of crowns.
Types Of Crowns
Your dentist will recommend the best crown type for your teeth. Here are a few of the possibilities they may suggest.
- Metal: This is the best type of crown because it doesn’t wear or chip easily and only a little bit of the tooth needs to be removed for it to fit. However, this type is the most visible.
- Porcelain-Fused-To-Metal: This type matches tooth color, but is also more breakable and more likely to cause wear to the tooth on the opposite side of your mouth when you close it.
- All-Resin: This is the least expensive, but it is the most likely to break and wear quickly.
- All-Ceramic/All-Porcelain: Though not as strong as other kinds of crowns, this type best matches tooth color and is a good choice for those with metal allergies.
- Pressed Ceramic: This type is capped with porcelain, but is stronger than all-porcelain crowns because of its hard inner core.
Process Of Putting On A Crown
The process of putting on a crown includes:
- Tooth Examination: Your dentist will take a look at the tooth, x-raying it and the surrounding bone. If tooth decay or risk for infection to tooth pulp is found, a root canal may be necessary first.
- Filing: The top and side of the tooth are filed down. If too much tooth is missing, than a filling is used to build it up.
- Crown Creation: An impression of your tooth is used to create the crown shape.
- Crown Application: The fit and color of the crown are checked first. Anesthesia may be used to numb the tooth before the dentist cements the crown to it.