Dr. Sang Tran is a dentist who has answered some of the common questions Bizymoms visitors have about Dental Crowns.
Q. What are dental crowns and tooth bridges?
A. In dentistry, we try to preserve as much natural tooth structure as possible. When a cavity develops, bacteria byproducts eat away at the tooth. A filling is needed to remove the damaged part of the tooth. Sometimes when the damage (decay) is too large, a filling is not enough to fill this void. There is a physical limitation to a filling and can be stressed too far under the load of everyday biting forces. A crown wraps around the entire tooth and helps prevent the tooth from a non-restorable break or fracture. This is usually a last effort to preserve the integrity of the tooth against the heavy chewing forces inside the mouth. A bridge is similar to a crown, but for multiple teeth. When a patient is missing a tooth, options include an implant (titanium root replacement), bridge, partial denture, or sometimes orthodontics to move teeth to close the space. A bridge is composed of crowns on the adjacent teeth to the space connected together by a false tooth made from the same material as the crowns.
Q. Why do crowns fail?
A. If you can get a cavity on natural teeth, you can get a cavity near the surface where the crown meets the tooth. This is the number one reason a crown needs replacement.
Q. How are crowns and bridges made?
A. All types of crowns are made by preparing the tooth to allow room for the crown material so that your crown is the same size as your original tooth without changing your bite. A temporary crown made from acrylic is placed on the tooth for two weeks. The measurements of the prepared tooth is sent to the lab, a technician builds the crown from the measurements, and the finished crown is sent back to the dentist for delivery. In addition to the lab process, all-porcelain crowns can be made with special CAD-CAM equipment in the dental office while you wait. Measurements are made with a special camera, then sent to software to design the tooth, and finally sent to a milling machine that will cut out the crown from a solid piece of porcelain. This CAD-CAM process takes about 1.5 to 2 hours.
Q. How long do crowns and bridges last?
A. Crowns can last two years or beyond thirty years, depending on how well it’s maintained.
Q. Is the procedure painful?
A. Crown procedure requires local anesthetic and would have some post treatment discomfort similar to having a filling done.
Q. How do I take care of my dental crowns and bridges?
A. Once a crown/bridge is delivered, you would need to keep it clean just like any other teeth. For crowns and bridges, it’s important to brush along the gumline (as with all teeth) and floss. For bridges, a special flossing technique to bring floss underneath the bridge is needed. Very simple to do once it’s demonstrated on delivery of the bridge.
Q. Are the non-metal crowns as strong as metal crowns?
A. Most common types of crowns are made from gold, porcelain fused to gold, and all porcelain. When it’s gold, it could be yellow gold or white gold. This is the strongest crown material. With this crown, you sacrifice esthetics for strength. A step up in esthetics is to bake tooth colored porcelain onto the gold crown (porcelain fused to gold). Though still a strong crown, the weakest point is the porcelain, which is usually very thin. This porcelain can break off eventually. The latest breakthrough in crown materials is in all porcelain crowns. We can now make a porcelain that can be as strong or stronger than natural teeth (EMax or zircornia). Though not as strong as gold, you get the most natural looking crowns available. If you can break a natural tooth, you can probably break one of these all porcelain crowns.
Q. How to contact Dr. Tran if we have further questions?
A.
Address:
2019 Anderson Rd.
Suite B
Davis, CA 95616
Phone: 530.758.7996
Fax: 530.758.8061
Email: sangtrandds@yahoo.com
Website: www.varsitydentistry.com
