Crowns and Bridges

Crowns

When a tooth has undergone extensive work, it may become too weak to take the load of chewing and eating. A dentist may recommend a crown in this case. The idea is to cover the entire biting surface with a very strong material. This means that when you chew on the tooth, all of the force will be equally distributed throughout the tooth and its roots. Risk of the tooth breaking and crumbling will therefore be greatly reduced.

Precious Gold Crowns

For back teeth, these are regarded as the gold standard. Precious materials are malleable, very strong and technicians are able to mill them to a knife-edge thickness. This ensures that remove the smallest amount of tooth tissue when preparing your tooth to take a gold crown. It also ensures a kind material to opposing teeth in your bite and they generally tend to last the longest amount of time.

Monolithic Zirconia Crowns

This is the strongest material used in dentistry. It is usually used for back teeth as they are regarded as ‘unbreakable.’ They are milled used Cad-Cam 3d milling machines. This ensures a very accurate fit onto your tooth. They are almost as thin as crowns and have the added benefit of being white in colour. This ensures a strong, natural looking crown, which is great for back teeth.

All Ceramic Crowns

The natural lustre and beauty of teeth can only be mimicked with the use of ceramics. These are able to reflect and refract light at the same wavelength as your natural teeth. When crowning front teeth, for the best aesthetics, we would recommend all ceramic crowns.

Ceramic fused to metal

In certain circumstances, extra strength may be required from a crown. A crown woud therefore be milled in a metal (precious or non-precious), and porcelain may be fused onto this. Since ceramic is quite brittle in thin sections the metal reinforces it to ensure good strength when we do not have a lot of tooth to work with. 99% of the time the crown will look as good as your natural teeth. However, is un-natural lighting (such as flash photography), the metal cause the tooth to look dull and un-natural.

Bridges

This is used to replace missing teeth. It usually involved placing crowns on one, or both of the teeth adjacent to a missing tooth. The crown will have an extra tooth attached to it, which in turn will give you a fixed tooth to replace the one you have lost. Your dentist will need to ensure that the adjacent teeth are strong enough to take the load of an extra tooth.

Other options to replace a missing tooth may include dental implants or dentures.