Crowns And Bridges

Crowns

A crown is a restoration that encompasses all surfaces of your tooth and is designed to bind the remaining tooth structure together.

The treatment for a crown traditionally involves two appointments. The first appointment is normally quite long. Any old fillings in the tooth are replaced at this appointment, and then the tooth is reshaped to a particular design, depending on the type of crown being fitted. A silicon rubber impression is taken of the prepared tooth, and then a temporary crown is fabricated and cemented with temporary cement.

At the second appointment the temporary crown is removed and the final crown tried in for fit, appearance and occlusion (fitting into the bite). Finally, it is cemented into place.

However, most crowns in the back of the mouth are now fabricated using CAD/CAM technology (CEREC) and the treatment is completed in a single unit.

Crowns – Before and After

All Porcelain Bonded

These are the most natural looking crowns as they have translucence and can be specially tailored to suit your natural tooth colour.

Zirconia Crown

This is the most common material used in crowns for back teeth. They are tooth coloured and are extremely strong.

Gold Alloy

Gold alloy is primarily employed for people with short clinical crowns as there is limited room for the restoration and less tooth preparation is required. Gold crowns are commonly used on the back molars where there is more wear of the dentition. However depending on the severity of any wear, treatment may be more complex as more teeth require restoration to rebuild the bite.

Although crowns are a highly effective method of tooth restoration, as caring and dedicated practitioners, we feel it is important to mention these possible problems:

  • Porcelain is a brittle material and it can fracture in function. Normally it can be repaired in the mouth, but occasionally the crown may need to be redone. Again, this has no reflection on our standard of work. However, a reduced fee would normally be negotiated if it needed to be redone.
  • Teeth with posts cemented into their roots are more prone to root fracture. If this occurs the tooth usually needs to be removed and the tooth would have to be replaced with an implant, a bridge or a small partial denture.
  • A good oral hygiene routine and regular maintenance check-ups are essential to maintain your crowns. Teeth can still decay around the crown margins with a poor oral care routine and a diet high refined foods.

Bridges

A bridge refers to a dental technique that was frequently utilised to replace missing teeth. A bridge involves crowning the teeth either side of a missing tooth/teeth, and the using these crown to support the missing teeth. The bridge is cemented in place as a single unit. However with the advances in implantology we feel that implants are often a more effective treatment option than bridges, as they do not involve the preparation of adjacent teeth.