Crowns

A dental crown, the best way to describe it is a covering of the tooth. Sometimes a tooth becomes so broken down, either from decay, or maybe the tooth just fractures that there's not enough tooth left to put a filling in. In other words, if you put a filling in that tooth, it would probably break right out just like whatever part of the tooth did. In that case, we will put a crown over the tooth, and that just strengthens the tooth, protects it, keeping it from breaking down further. The most common material that we use now is porcelain. It is the most cosmetically appealing and the porcelains that they have now are very strong. There actually is a material called zirconia that is technically a metal but it's tooth colored, and it's very strong, and we use those in some cases as well. In certain cases, we use gold. One of the nice things is we're able to make the crowns in 1 day now. Ninety to 95% of the crowns that we do, we do in one visit. The benefits of getting a dental crown really is being able to keep the tooth long-term. I've seen crowns that have been in people's mouths for 40 or 50 years and we've got other patients who are big grinders, and they're doing well to get 5 years out of a crown. As far as care for a new crown, I always tell patients it's pretty much the way you would take care of your own teeth. You just brush and floss, just make sure you get the surfaces clean like you would your natural teeth. Really nothing too unique.