Essential Information You Must Have About Dental Crowns
Your permanent teeth sustain damages from decay, injuries, and regular use over time. You cannot repair extensive cracks with restorative materials like fillings. As a result, your teeth might lose their shape and size, leaving you with an uneven smile. Dental crowns are tooth caps that help restore your teeth after they are placed over them, fitting like a snug hat.
Dental crowns help protect, cover, and restore the shape of your teeth when fillings aren’t sufficient to resolve the problem. Various materials like metals, porcelain, resin, and ceramics help make dental crowns that don’t require special attention over time other than excellent oral hygiene.
Why Do Dental Crowns Become Necessary?
You may need a tooth crown for various reasons, including to protect a weak tooth from breaking or keeping it together if it has already cracked. If you want to restore a broken tooth or one severely worn down or support a tooth with significant fillings but without much tooth structure, remaining a dental crown proves adequate for the restoration. Dental crowns also help cover a severely misshapen or discoloured tooth. If you have missing teeth, dental crowns help hold a dental bridge in place or cover dental implants.
If severe decay has resulted in you requiring root canal therapy, dental crowns help protect the treated tooth weakened and rendered fragile by the treatment.
Materials Helping Make Dental Crowns
As mentioned earlier, metals like gold and palladium, besides porcelain fused to metal, all resin or all-porcelain and pressed ceramic help make dental crowns. While the crowns help restore all teeth, some are better suited for the molars, while the others are appropriate for your front teeth. Therefore if you think you can benefit from these restorations, you can consider visiting dental crown in Markham, ON, to restore the appearance of your teeth and smile.
Tooth Preparation for Crowns
You will require two visits to the Markham facility to prepare for a dental crown. You can even have a dental crown designed in one visit in some cases.
During your first visit, the tooth needing the crown undergoes examination and preparation. X-rays of the tooth and the bone surrounding it are taken. If you have any tooth decay or risk of infections or injuries to the dental pulp, the dentist might recommend root canal therapy before your dental crown procedure.
If you don’t have any issues affecting the tooth, it is prepared by the dentist after giving local anesthesia and filing the tops and sides of the tooth to accommodate the restoration. How much tooth structure removal is necessary depends on the crown you have selected. For example, porcelain fused to metal crowns require extensive tooth structure removal than metal crowns which are thinner.
After reshaping the tooth, the dentist impressions it for the dental laboratory to fabricate your restoration. You receive temporary crowns over the prepared tooth because the dental lab requires three weeks to prepare your crown.
You can schedule another appointment with the dentist three weeks later to have the permanent crown placed on a tooth. During the second visit, the procedure begins with temporary crown removal and checking the colour and fit of the permanent crown. You again receive local anesthesia to numb your tooth as the dentist cements the new crown permanently over your tooth.
Problems You Might Encounter with New Crowns
You might experience discomfort and sensitivity with a newly crowned tooth after the anesthesia begins wearing off. You might receive recommendations to brush with toothpaste created for sensitive teeth for a few days. Besides the above, you might encounter problems like a chipped crown, loose crown or a crown coming off. In all cases, you must contact the dentist treating you for advice and have the restoration fixed on your tooth as soon as possible.
The lifespan of Dental Crowns
Dental crowns are durable and last for between five to 15 years. The lifespan of a crown depends on the wear and tear the crown must sustain and your oral hygiene practices besides your mouth-related habits. If you clench and grind your teeth, chew ice, use teeth to open packages or bite your fingernails, expect to replace the crown sooner than expected.
A crowned tooth does not require special attention besides brushing and flossing. However, it helps if you realize the underlying tooth needs protection from tooth decay and gingivitis. Therefore you must continue following excellent dental hygiene practices, brushing and flossing your teeth, and getting six-monthly dental exams and cleanings without exceptions.
If you have damaged teeth in your mouth and think you can benefit from dental crowns, we recommend you visit New Delhi Dental for an evaluation and receive the dental crowns you need.