Dental Crowns Restore Damaged Teeth

Well, first our goal with crowns and any dental work that we do is to be minimally invasive. We want to remove as minimal tooth structure as we can, so if we can place a filling then that's our choice. But in cases where there's a larger cavity or the tooth has fractured, there's not enough tooth structure to hold onto a filling, then a good option frequently is to do a crown on the tooth. For a crown we initially kind of build up the core of the tooth that's missing due to the cavity or the break and then just minimally shape the remainder of the tooth so that a crown can fit over the top of it to protect the tooth. With our crown preps and bridge preparations we use digital scanners, which are much more accurate than the traditional method in which people have to have a lot of goopy impression material in their mouths, so the accuracy and the comfort for the patient is increased. A crown procedure generally takes two appointments. The first is roughly an hour to prepare the tooth for the crown and make a temporary that should be very comfortable and look good, and then generally coming back three weeks later for a half an hour to seat the crown. Our aim with our crowns is for them to look exactly like natural teeth and to function like the natural tooth did previously. We're very excited about the digital scanner for our crowns and bridge preps and for Invisalign impressions. Upon taking the digital scan we can immediately send it off to the laboratory so they can start working so the turnaround time on crowns is faster. At Chrisman-Wyse Dental we feel it's important to partner with the best labs available. Our primary lab is in California and they do wonderful work, and I think that's a key component to making the most aesthetic and functional crowns possible.