Dental Crowns in Dacula

What Is A Dental Crown?

A dental crown is a specialized prosthesis that is designed to look, feel, and function just like a natural tooth. After your tooth has been trimmed, a crown can be attached to it to repair damage to the tooth from a dental injury, tooth decay, or any other oral health issue.

Today, dental crowns are typically made of a porcelain tooth that is bonded to a durable metal base. These crowns look and feel very natural, and their color can be matched to your surrounding teeth, providing you with better cosmetic results. However, other materials like gold and stainless steel are sometimes used for crowns, too.

Crowns are typically recommended for restoring decayed teeth if a filling is not a good option, or if a large, old filling appears to be failing. Dental crowns are also commonly used to restore teeth after root canal therapy, and to repair teeth that have been cracked or broken by an oral injury.

Why Would I Need A Crown?

Dental crowns are the best option for repairing your teeth if they have been damaged by decay or dental trauma. This is because, unlike a filling or any other restorative treatment, crowns cover up your entire tooth structure, all the way down to the gum line.

This means that your tooth can be repaired even if it has been seriously damaged, and that it will be protected from further damage and complications. Since your remaining healthy enamel is completely covered up by the crown, you won’t have to worry about further decay or damage to the enamel of your tooth.

However, crowns are not always used solely for restorative purposes. In some cases, dental crowns may be used for cosmetic dentistry. For example, if you need to restore a very stained tooth or a tooth that’s severely misshapen or uneven, a cosmetic treatment like veneers or dental bonding may not be ideal. A crown may be the best way to restore your tooth, and provide you with a better smile.

The Crown Placement Process

After you’ve been approved for a dental crown, our Dacula dentists typically require two appointments over a period of 2-3 weeks. To begin, you’ll come into our office to have your tooth prepared for your crown.

Dr. Josh Haycock will begin by cleaning and numbing your mouth. Once the treatment area is sufficiently numb, he will begin trimming away decayed or damaged enamel using a dental drill, and he will shape your tooth into a sturdy, stable platform for your dental crown. After your tooth has been trimmed, he will use a set of dental trays to take impressions of your teeth, and attach a temporary resin crown to your tooth to protect it until your second appointment.

Then, you’ll be sent home. Dr. Haycock will send your dental impressions to a dental lab, where your permanent crown will be made out of a ceramic porcelain material by a lab technician. This will take about 2-3 weeks, in most cases.

Finally, you’ll come in for your second appointment. Dr. Haycock will remove your temporary crown, clean the area, and check your permanent crown to ensure it fits perfectly. Once everything looks good, Dr. Haycock will bond your crown onto your tooth permanently with dental cement, completing the procedure.

Whenever you lose a tooth, it can have a big impact on both your smile and the integrity and health of your teeth. Many people focus on aesthetics – how it looks to have a missing tooth – which is a real problem that needs addressing. However, most don’t think about the other effects of a lost tooth, such as impairing your ability to chew and speak properly or the stress it puts on your other teeth.

Let’s take a closer look at the consequences of a lost tooth:

Proper chewing and speaking

The adult human mouth naturally has 32 teeth, so losing just one of them might not seem like a big deal. That is, until you’ve lost it.

Then, you realize how important that tooth was for chewing – and even speaking – properly, which can diminish your ability to enjoy food and impact your self-confidence.

Of course, some teeth can be more important than others for these tasks, meaning the impact a lost tooth has on the functionality of the rest of your teeth is dependent on which tooth it is, as well as the anatomy of your mouth.

Even bite distribution

If you’ve ever sprained an ankle or hurt one side of your body, you might already understand how overcompensation on the other side can worsen the problem. If, for example, you hurt one of your hips and start to rely more on the other hip, then the uninjured hip can also start to hurt under its new, unproportional burden. Our bodies are meant to have balance, with an even distribution of force and weight.

The mouth is no different. If you lose a tooth on one side of your mouth, affecting your ability to chew properly on that side, then the other side of your mouth is going to begin handling more stress than it’s accustomed to. Ultimately, this can mean that the other side of your mouth starts to develop problems much more quickly than it would have otherwise.

The position of other teeth

One of the things that keeps our teeth in their proper places is the other teeth around them, which serve as structural support. Hence, when you lose a tooth, the teeth surrounding that tooth can begin to drift out of position and become misaligned. If a tooth becomes too far out of place there may be no recourse other than orthodontic treatment.

How Auburn Hills Can Help

In many cases, bridges are the best way to fix a lost tooth. They are literally a bridge between your teeth, with two caps placed on the teeth next to the lost tooth and a false tooth – called a pontic – filling the gap created by the lost tooth.

To place a bridge, we’ll first need to make sure it’s the best option for you, which can depend on the structure and health of the surrounding teeth. If it is the right option, we’ll prepare the surrounding teeth by removing some enamel and taking impressions that we’ll send to the lab to create your bridge. In the meantime, we’ll place a temporary bridge to protect your teeth and gums. If you have a tooth that needs to be extracted and replaced using a bridge, a temporary bridge can be placed the same day so you never have to go without the tooth.

Once the bridge is ready to go, you will come in for the placement, which is usually quick and pain-free. We will also have you come in for at least one follow-up appointment to make sure everything is going as planned.

If you’d like to schedule an appointment for us to examine your teeth and figure out if a bridge is the best solution, reach out today at 678-804-8818!