Dental Crowns

Protective Craigmore Dental Caps

A dental crown is like a protective cap that fits over your tooth. We use them to restore areas where enamel is cracked, worn down or decaying. Sometimes a tooth breaks because of an accident or biting down hard on something. When this happens, a crown can give you your smile back.

Why Get a Crown?

When an area is too damaged to repair with a filling (or we know a filling would just be prone to breaking off) then a crown is the next best line of defence. Otherwise, filling it would just cause the area to continually need to be retreated and patched over. Or, the entire tooth could break apart.

Crowns hold everything together, preventing additional fractures or the tooth splitting entirely.

What to Expect

When you get a crown, we have to shave back a little bit of the tooth to make room for the cap to sit on top of it. Otherwise it would be too big. As far as the number of appointments and treatment process, it’s similar to having a bridge made and delivered. Within two appointments your permanent crown will be ready to cement in place.

Your crown is designed from porcelain, gold or a porcelain shell over a metal base. Depending on the location of the tooth and the aesthetics that we need, porcelain fused to metal base is typically the best solution as it adds strength to the restoration.

With good home care and daily flossing, you can typically expect a new crown to last 10-15 years. It’s important to keep the margins around your cap very clean, as bacteria can accumulate around the edges and potentially cause the restoration to fail.

Our Dentist will select a porcelain that closely resembles the colour of the teeth next to your new crown, so that the fixed restoration blends in when you smile or laugh.