A crown covers and protects your tooth
Teeth are amazing. From age six our adult teeth are busy chewing, grinding and smashing food. Many body parts experience stress and loads with day to day use, but your teeth are the only ones your body cannot repair. Fractured bones, torn ligaments and cuts all heal with time, but teeth do not.
Small amounts of damage can be repaired with fillings, but they are too weak to adequately restore heavily damaged teeth. When a tooth is sufficiently damaged, a crown is the best solution.
How much damage?
-Cracked or fractured teeth
-existing filling is 50% of the tooth, 50% the width of the tooth or a corner
-Root canalled posterior teeth.
What is a crown?
A crown is a restoration that covers the entire biting surface of the tooth and much or all of the sides. It is produced outside of the mouth, of materials that are much stronger than fillings. It is then cemented onto the tooth
What do they look like?
However we want them to. The majority of crowns in our office are white and made to look exactly like a natural tooth, but sometimes gold is requested.
What happens if I don’t get a crown?
Heavily restored and weakened teeth left uncrowned are at a much higher risk of fracture, just as a drink driver is at a much higher risk of collision. A drink driver may get home safely, and a heavily restored tooth may survive for a time without breaking. But the odds are against them, and when they fail what is left may not be fixable.
