What is a crown?
- A crown is done when a tooth has a cavity that is too large to be treated with only a filling or there is a crack in the tooth. The doctor will remove any decay or compromised surface from the tooth. Then the doctor will protect the tooth with a full coverage crown or cap that fits over the remaining tooth structure.
- A filling can not be done at this point because it is likely to fall out.
- If untreated, a tooth with a crack can break apart. If this happens the tooth might not be able to be saved
- Our office typically does porcelain crowns.
- Our office even has a milling machine and we are able to make a lot of crowns in our office.
- A lot of times we are able to make same day crowns, but we never guarantee we will be able to do a crown the same day. This is because the ability to mill a same day crown is dependent on how busy our schedule is for that particular day.
- For front teeth, we will typically send a patient’s case to a lab off site. The off site labs we use have experts lab technicians that can designing beautiful crowns. We like for the front teeth, that are very visible in a person’s mouth to look amazing.
- We have done gold crowns in the past when requested by patients. Those cases are sent to off site labs as well.
- If a crown is not milled the same day a tooth is prepped, we will still remove the decay from the tooth and then will send the patient home with a temporary crown.
- If the crown is milled in our office we typically bring patients back within a couple days to a week.
- Crowns sent off to the lab take about two weeks to come back to us.
- We do not recommend having a temporary crown on for longer than necessary.
- Ex: Do not go on vacation for a month with a temporary crown.
- During the procedure there will be no pain involved because the patient will be numb.
- Following a crown procedure some minor sensitivity is normal for a couple weeks, but a patient can always call us with any concerns.
