Restoration
SMILE FIRST
Crowns
A dental crown is constructed to restore a tooth to its original size and shape following extensive dental treatment like a root canal or extraction, advanced tooth decay removal or a broken tooth.
Crowns can be made out of several types of materials. Porcelain dental crowns, in particular, are very durable and are popular among dental patients because they can be made to resemble the natural tooth.
We place crowns:
– To support a large filling where there isn’t enough tooth structure remaining
– To attach a bridge
– To protect weak teeth from fracturing
– To restore fractured teeth
– To cover badly shaped or discolored teeth
– To cover a dental implant
Crowns can be made from a number of materials: gold or semiprecious alloys, porcelain or ceramic, acrylic or composite resin. Combinations of these materials can also be used.The placement of a crown traditionally requires two visits: the first to prepare the tooth and take the impression, the second for cementing the crown. HOWEVER, at Smile First Family Dental Studio, our dentists use CEREC to complete crowns from start to finish in under 2 hours!!
Chairside Economical Restoration of Esthetic Ceramics, also known as Ceramic Reconstruction or CEREC, is a new technology that allows a properly trained dentist to fit and install a crown in one visit. The CEREC process eliminates the need to fit and wear a temporary crown while a lab constructs the permanent model, saving the patient time and stress. Because the CEREC crown is made entirely from porcelain and contains no metal, this type of crown can be more aesthetically pleasing than other alternatives. The latest materials of Porcelain, which we exclusively use for crowns, IPS emax, are much stronger than traditional porcelain fused to metal lab crowns!
During a CEREC crown appointment, the dentist scans the affected tooth and stores it as a three-dimensional digital model. A software program then designs the appropriate crown using the saved image, which an on-site milling unit then constructs. The dentist fits and applies the new, permanent crown to the patient’s tooth with special dental cement that bonds the crown and tooth together. The entire procedure takes about an hour and a half!
