Before you have that badly broken and decayed tooth extracted, you should always think about having a crown placed on the tooth. This is because a crown can make the tooth last for many more years to come. A dental crown is like a hard protective cover over what remains of your own natural tooth. This means that you can continue to eat and chew as normal again. The new dental crowns are so good that they are almost imperceptible from natural teeth for appearance. When having a crown done there are only 2 things to really consider:
- The strength
- The appearance
For strength, nothing come closer to gold crowns. They can be made very thin but will last years and years. I have several patients who had gold crowns placed by me when I was still a student. These gold crowns look like they were placed yesterday and will certainly go on for another 20 years. The second factor to consider is the appearance because not everyone wants their crown to be gold and what if it is at the front of the mouth. For these reasons, dental porcelain is used to make aesthetic dental crowns. In the early days, the porcelain could break so a layer of metal was used underneath to strengthen. These were called porcelain fused to metal crowns or PFM or VMK crowns. Due to the metal, they can sometimes look bulky and a black line can be seen around the gum line. For this reason, at our clinic we use the new type of crowns that does not need the layer of metal. There are different names for these crowns such as Cerec, Zirconia and EMAX. All crowns only take one or two visits to have done. Once your tooth has been cleaned and shaped, dental impressions are taken so that a crown can be made which will be exactly like your own natural tooth. Once your new crown has been fitted, you can chew on it straight away. Cleaning and flossing is just how you normally clean. We have several dental payment interest free options so you can spread out the payments.
REFERENCES
See comment in PubMed Commons below
Acta Odontol Scand. 2015 Jan 30.
Fracture resistance of monolithic zirconia molar crowns with reduced thickness.
Nakamura K1, Harada A, Inagaki R, Kanno T, Niwano Y, Milleding P, Örtengren U.
Fundamentals of Fixed Prosthodontics
Contemporary Fixed Prosthodontics, 25 Sep 2015
by Stephen F. Rosenstiel BDS MSD Martin F. Land DDS MSD
Pickard’s Guide to Minimally Invasive Operative Dentistry11 Jun 2015
by Avijit Banerjee (Author), Timothy F. Watson (Author)
Junhei Fujimoto DDS MSD DDSc (Author)