A dental crown is a tooth-shaped cap that is placed over a damaged or decayed tooth to protect it. They can also improve the appearance of teeth by correcting their shape and colour and provide a more attractive smile.
They can be used to address a wide variety of problems from severe decay, root canal treatment, and the aftermath of a cracked or chipped tooth to reshape misshaped teeth and even replace missing teeth (with the exception of dental implants). In some cases, a crown may be used to support a bridge if there is not enough natural tooth structure remaining.
When a crown is placed, the natural tooth and gum around it will be numbed first using either a local or general anaesthetic. Then the tooth will be reshaped along the chewing surface and sides to make room for the crown. The amount of reduction will depend on the type of crown being used. For example, all-metal crowns require less natural tooth structure to be removed than PFM (porcelain fused to metal) crowns.
Dental Crown: When and Why You Might Need One
There are many different types of crowns available, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. For instance,’multi-porcelain’ crowns use multiple different types of porcelains in various layers to achieve the best colour match and optical quality compared with natural teeth. However, these crowns tend to be thicker and do not wear as well as PFM crowns. At VC Dental, we offer’monolithic’ CAD/CAM machine produced crowns made from a single block of ceramic material which are thin and strong, but do not have the best colour match and are not as translucent as multi-porcelain crowns.…