Dental Crowns An Overview
Dental crowns are one of the most versatile treatments, serving cosmetic and restorative purposes and preserving the natural tooth. A dental crown is a tooth-shaped cap covering a decayed, cracked, or damaged tooth. Dentists turn to tooth caps when a filling is insufficient.
Dr. Brenda Paulen often recommends dental crowns for patients with damaged, misshapen, or severely discolored teeth. Dental crowns are typically made of high-quality porcelain materials customized to blend with your natural smile. An experienced and highly trained dentist, Dr. Paulen, will ensure that your dental crown is aesthetically pleasing and supports your long-term dental health with a comfortable fit.
Dental Crown Options
Dr. Paulen uses metal-free dental crowns in cosmetic dentistry to improve the appearance of misshapen teeth, misaligned or discolored, and eliminate dark lines and allergic reactions.
Atlanta dentist Dr. Paulen offers several choices in material for dental crowns. She will use a tooth-colored restoration, such as porcelain, for teeth in the smile zone. We color-match dental crowns of this type to blend seamlessly with your smile. Porcelain is durable and stain-resistant, an ideal material choice to complete your smile.
Teeth in the back of the mouth may be better restored using a Zirconium tooth-colored material for strength and durability. While this option is more expensive than traditional porcelain, it’s extremely durable. It’s one of the strongest materials available for a dental crown. We recommend this for the teeth that are doing the most biting and chewing.
Both choices are highly durable and aesthetic. Dr. Paulen will help you choose the right one based on your needs, goals, and budget.
The Uses of Dental Crowns
Dental crowns are a popular restoration because they can treat various cosmetic and restorative dental problems.
Cosmetic Uses
When you have tooth discoloration, professional whitening is usually the treatment. But not all discoloration responds to traditional whitening techniques. Teeth discolored by things like medication or trauma need something else. We can color-match a dental crown to blend in perfectly with the rest of your teeth.
Misshapen or disfigured teeth can impact your self-esteem and the function of your smile. Depending on the disfiguration and where the tooth is in your mouth, it can impact your speech or your ability to bite and chew food. A dental crown eliminates the defect and is shaped to blend in with the rest of your teeth. Since each is custom-made, we can also craft them to eliminate small gaps between your teeth.
Restorative Uses
One of the most popular uses for a dental crown is to stabilize the tooth. When we perform a root canal, we remove the infected pulp from the inside of the tooth. We clean the area, fill it with biocompatible material, and then seal the tooth off to prevent further infection. But sometimes, this isn’t enough. A dental crown protects against further infection and gives you back the tooth’s full function.
Crowns are usually the last resort to save the natural tooth structure before extracting it. We use dental crowns for teeth that are extremely decayed or damaged, where fillings, inlays, or onlays can’t adequately treat the problem. Dental restorations must be functional; we don’t want to leave you with a weak tooth.
Dental crowns fortify natural teeth that need to support a dental bridge. When natural teeth support the bridge, they take on a lot of stress. They wear down faster and are more likely to succumb to tooth decay. We place dental crowns over those teeth to take the strain off your natural teeth while the crowns take on all the stress.
Lastly, dental crowns are the top choice to complete a dental implant. When implants are topped with crowns, they look and feel like natural teeth. Implant posts in the jawbone provide a restoration that has unmatched stability compared to the other tooth replacement options. Crowns are custom-made so that they blend in with your smile. Others can’t tell that it isn’t a natural tooth.
Real Results With Dental Crowns
