Your teeth are incredibly durable, but they’re not designed to withstand everything life throws at them. An injury can result in cracked or chipped teeth, poor dental hygiene can call for a root canal, and genetics can hand you an oddly shaped tooth.
In these cases (and many others), you need something that quickly restores your smile’s beauty and function. Enter dental crowns.
At Rifkin Dental in Carmel and Yorktown Heights, New York, our expert dentists use crowns to treat a variety of smile problems. Fortunately, we can choose from different types of crowns to better suit your needs.
Here’s a closer look at the types of crowns we offer and which is best for you.
In the simplest terms, crowns are shells, or covers, for damaged teeth. We carefully design them to mimic the shape and shade of your other natural teeth before placing them on top of your original tooth.
In one fell swoop, a crown stabilizes your once-damaged tooth and completely restores appearance and function. Crowns are typically made from one of the following materials:
The type of crown you get depends on two main factors: location and durability.
We can place a crown on virtually any of your teeth, but we’re careful about which type of crown we use in certain parts of your mouth. For instance, you wouldn’t want a stainless steel or gold crown covering one of your front teeth where everyone can see it.
If you need a crown in a more visible area of your mouth, we typically recommend a resin or ceramic crown. These materials allow us to match the shade of your other teeth almost exactly, giving you a flawless, seamless smile.
Resin and ceramic crowns are more aesthetically pleasing, but they’re far less durable than gold, stainless steel, or porcelain-fused-to-metal crowns. And durability matters when you consider the force and stress your molars take daily.
That’s why we recommend more durable materials for your back teeth — don’t worry, no one will be able to tell.
Getting a crown usually takes two office visits. The first allows us to take X-rays and prepare your tooth for the crown by carefully filing it down. We also take impressions of your teeth and send all relevant data to a lab where your customized crown is created.
Before you leave, we place a temporary crown on your tooth to protect it while you wait for your permanent crown. We recommend avoiding sticky, chewy foods, such as gum and caramels, and crunching hard foods on the side of your mouth with the temporary crown.
During your next visit, we make final adjustments to your prepared tooth and place your permanent crown.
Now that your damaged tooth has a second lease on life, it’s time to review some ground rules to avoid re-damaging it.
Crowns behave much like your natural teeth and can suffer from many of the same problems. Your crown can:
To avoid these pitfalls, we strongly encourage you to maintain a consistent oral hygiene routine, using proper brushing and flossing techniques. You may need to switch to a toothpaste formulated for sensitive teeth.
We also caution against hard and crunchy foods and bad habits like biting your nails and using your teeth as tools.
Crowns are meant to last 15 years if you care for them properly. However, life happens and sometimes your crowns pay the price. If anything happens to your crown, don’t wait to have one of our experts evaluate and repair it.
For more on crowns or to request a consultation, schedule an appointment online or over the phone today at our Rifkin Dental location closest to you.
