Porcelain Crowns

Porcelain crowns or caps are among the most viable and predictable treatments in dentistry. Your dentist may recommend porcelain crowns or porcelain caps when and if structural stability of the tooth has gotten weak, and fracture of the tooth and complete loss of the tooth becomes eminent. To avoid loss of teeth due to fractures, an external protective layer must provide stability to the tooth. Dental Crowns or Dental Caps provide this stability and could be made from a variety of material including, Gold, stainless steal, porcelains and zirconia. Crowning a tooth before its fracture and loss, will prevent unnecessary costly emergency dental and medical treatments. The timing of crowning a tooth is important. If an extensive period of time has passed since the recommendation of crown, the chance of fracture and loss of tooth is greater. There are many reasons your dentist may recommend a crown, some of which include: large cavities, after root canal treatment, broken tooth, fractured tooth, and finally cosmetic concerns.

Crowns Due to Large Cavities

If the cavity on a tooth remains untreated for some time, it will severely undermine the structural integrity of the tooth. You might have heard someone complaining about breaking a tooth while eating something soft. This happens when a tooth that has sustained significant damage due to dental cavity and can no longer bear the sheering stress of biting and clenching and grinding that it eventually fails. To prevent this, your dentist will remove the cavity entirely, build up the tooth back to a healthy state, before making a full coverage porcelain cap to prevent it from breaking under forces of biting in the future. IF you as a patient follow care recommendation, a well made crown can last anywhere between 25-50 years.

Crowns After Root Canal Treatment

Dental Crowns are sometimes indicated after root canal treatment. This is because to access living part of the tooth where the infection resides, and to resolve the symptoms associated with dental infection, a large hole is be made in the center of the tooth to gain access to the infected portion called the dental pulp. This hole, due to its extent and position in most cases undermines the structural stability of the tooth, especially those that are under constant pressure from chewing such as molars, premolars, and canines. Therefore, after completion of root canal, the access hole is closed with filling material, and the entire tooth is crowned to prevent fracture and loss of the tooth in the future.

Crowns on Fractured Teeth

Forces of chewing, or mastication, are strong and able to damage a healthy tooth. Chronic and continuous chewing on hard foods such as nuts, and ice, will slowly result in formation of micro-fracture within the enamel of the tooth that ultimately propagates to underlying structure called dentin. If these cracks continues to the living part of the tooth, also called the pulp, tooth may require a root canal or in some cases must be extracted. Therefore, as soon as micro-fracture are observed, your dentist may recommend crowns to other costly treatments in the future.

Cosmetic Crowns

In some patients with cosmetic concerns, similar to the photo of patient seen above this page, it may not be possible to achieve ideal cosmetic results with out use of porcelain crowns. This is due to loss of structural stability of the tooth as a result of cavities, failed fillings, and worn our out teeth. These scenarios, require use of crowns, especially porcelain crowns and zirconia crowns, to restore the structure, and aesthetics of teeth. Porcelain crowns have the ability to bring back severely worn out teeth, back to a healthy state and if maintained properly can last many decades.