Prestige Dental Care

Topics

• To read on dental bridge click here
• Crown – What is it?
• How do we do it?
• Picture on cases done in our clinic
• Maintenance

Crown – What is it?

A crown is a replacement of the outside casing of your teeth that is permanently fixed to the tooth below. In other words, the decayed or damaged area of your tooth is removed and replaced by synthetic material, such as porcelain, to create a new ‘tooth’ with permanent results.

Crowns are often used after a root canal treatment, because the removal of a nerve causes a tooth to discolour. However, there are other reasons your dentist might crown one or more of your teeth: to restore a damaged or fracture tooth, to protect a weakened tooth so that it does not fracture under stress or to reinforce a large filling where there is not enough tooth structure left below.
Crowns are also made out of various material: gold or non-precious alloy, porcelain or ceramics, acrylic or composite resin, or even a combination of porcelain on metal. Obviously the material chosen will be in line with what will work best for your particular problem.

Currently, most dentist use porcelain fused to metal crown or full porcelain crown as both crowns produce good aesthetic result

How do we do it?

When crowning a tooth, your dentist starts by filing away away between 1mm and 2mm on every surface of your teeth, and then the entire surface is smoothed. Next, an impression is taken of the prepared tooth by syringing an impression material into the space around the tooth and holding an impression tray in position until the material has set. This gives the laboratory a perfect negative copy of your tooth, which allows them to make up the permanent crown. The dentist also ensures he sends the laboratory details of what the colour porcelain to use, to ensure the crown looks natural.

Your are then fitted with a temporary crown, which is really just a rough space-filler, while you wait for the laboratory manufacture the permanent fixture.
At the following appointment, the dentist will have taken delivery of the permanent crown. The temporary crown is then removed, and the prepared tooth below thoroughly cleaned and dried. Then the new, permanent crown is cemented onto the tooth below. Any excess cement is removed, and the treatment completed.

Picture on cases done in our clinic

Here is a example of a discolour tooth that is replaced with a full porcelain crown (E-Max)

The young gentleman dislike his front discolour right central incisor

His tooth discolouration was due to old filling and the tooth is non-vital

After the tooth is prepared, colour of the porcelain crown is chosen to match his neighbour teeth

The full porcelain crown is cemented onto the tooth

Final Result – natural looking crown!!  (Treatment done by Dr. H.W.NG)

Maintenance

You do need to take care of your crown and not overstress it by biting or chewing very hard food. You can also floss normally around a crown. If at a later stage, your crown should break, you need to see your dentist as soon as possible, especially if the tooth inside becomes sensitive. Save the fractured piece if you can, as this can be glued back on temporarily until a new crown is made.

Read more

• Root canal Treatment
• Highly aesthetic – Full porcelain crown
• Dental Bridge
• Porcelain bridge
• Fear of Dental Treatment? How to overcome it..?

More info on General Dental Treatment

• Dental check-up
• Kids Dentistry
• Scaling and Polishing
• Fillings with composite resin
• Root Canal Treatment
• Crown
• Bridge
• Denture
• Dental Implant

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