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Dental Crowns
What is a Dental Crown?
A dental crown procedure restores a tooth’s shape, size, and strength. It completely envelops the visible portion of your tooth or dental implant. Once it is permanently bonded in place, only a your dentist can remove it.
With good oral hygiene and proper care, the life of a crown can range from 10 to 15 years. If you choose a natural tooth-colored porcelain crown, our CEREC® CAD/CAM system can create that crown while you are in our office and it can be placed and sealed all in one appointment. Other types of crowns require two office visits.
When Would I Need a Crown?
The Types of Crowns
After your consultation, Dr. Krauss will recommend the best type of dental crown procedure for you based on the chewing placement and structure of the tooth or implant that needs protection. There are three types of crowns. Each type meets different needs:
Full Porcelain
Porcelain is natural looking, strong, stable, and highly resistant to wear. It offers a high level of biocompatibility because it does not contain metal.
A porcelain crown provides the absolute best color match to the rest of your teeth and is an excellent choice for front teeth. The aesthetic quality of a porcelain crown requires that your Bakersfield dentist be highly skilled in the use of CEREC® CAD/CAM technology. Dr. Krauss was one of the first cosmetic dentists in Bakersfield to use CEREC® CAD/CAM technology and has created thousands of beautiful looking and perfectly fitting porcelain crowns
Porcelain-Fused-To-Metal
Porcelain-fused-to-metal offers the benefits of a natural surface color that resembles the rest of your teeth and the strength of a metal substructure.
While there are several advantages to selecting this type of crown, it requires the removal of more of the tooth structure than other types of crowns. This means that there is greater potential for patient discomfort during the treatment procedure.
Full-Metal
Metal crowns offer strength and endurance. A metal crown may be recommended for back teeth where the forces of biting and chewing are the greatest. A metal crown rarely chips or breaks. In addition, it requires minimal removal of tooth structure.
A gold or other high-noble metal crown offers biocompatibility. A base metal crown is often the least expensive of treatment options; however, it lacks biocompatibility and may cause allergic reactions or gumline discoloration.
How Do Crowns Work?
First, we make an impression of the tooth using a camera that fits inside the mouth. The machine can then take that optical image and create a 3D model of the tooth. The crown is then milled at the office and this takes approximately 12 minutes to complete. Many other local Bakersfield dental practices take the impression and send it off to a lab to crate the crown and then have you come back for a second visit to fit the crown. But, Bakersfield Smile Design employs the most state of the art equipment to ensure your comfort and save you time.
If we are doing more than three crowns at once, or doing a bridge, or challenging aesthetic front crowns, then we still use the labs, but for the majority of the crowns we do now, Dr. Krauss can create them and seat them in approximately an hour. Tooth crowns usually last ten to fifteen years.
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