How important are your teeth?
We know that’s not an easy question to answer. We also know it’s one that most people don’t consider until they have lost or damaged one or more teeth.
Most people take for granted that they can smile, bite, and chew … until they don’t feel comfortable doing those things any longer. At Newingham Dental Center, we can help you get back your smile and the full use of any teeth that need to be repaired or replaced.
In as little as a day, a dental crown can restore your tooth as well as the confidence to share your smile with the people you meet each day.
You can find out what a crown could do for you — and how you can get one — by scheduling an appointment at our office in Birmingham, MI. Call 248-972-8720 to get started on restoring your smile!
Reasons to Repair Your Smile
Dental crowns can solve a lot of problems:
- Broken teeth
- Cracked teeth
- Decayed teeth
- Dark or discolored teeth
- Misshapen teeth
- Undersized teeth
- Worn-down teeth
- Infected teeth
- Missing teeth
Crowns may not be able to fix every dental problem, but they can be helpful in many situations. What will use to prepare your mouth for a crown will vary depending on your particular problem.
A New Crown in One Visit
For many of the problems listed above, we are happy to say that we can fix them in a single visit to our practice. To understand why that is important, we first want to explain the old way of getting a dental crown.
Whether you have a broken, cracked, decayed, or discolored tooth, your dentist will need to remove the problematic part of the tooth. Through this process, the dentist forms the healthy parts of the tooth into an abutment. This is where your crown can be bonded to the tooth for support.
These crowns are often made in dental labs. Depending on how far away that lab is and how many orders they received ahead of yours, it could take several weeks before your crown is shipped to your dentist.
In the meantime, you’ll wear a temporary crown. That offers some protection, but you’ll need to be careful about eating with a temporary crown. You don’t want it to come loose or break.
When your permanent crown arrives, you will need to make another appointment with your dentist to have it bonded to your tooth (assuming it was made correctly and fits).
You can avoid those potential hassles and save yourself a trip to the dentist by getting a CEREC crown at Newingham Dental Center. With this technology, we have a digital scanning system and an in-office milling machine.
As a result, we can make your permanent crown while you wait. You won’t have to live with a temporary crown. And if your crown doesn’t fit quite right, we’ll fix it then and there that same day.
The process for fixing discolored, misshapen, and worn-down teeth is the same as what we described above. We’ll reshape your tooth so it can support a crown. Then, we’ll make a crown that matches the color, size, and shape of the rest of your smile.
A Dynamic Duo for a Completely New Tooth
If you are missing a tooth or you need a tooth removed, the process is different. Since you no longer have a tooth, you also don’t have anything to support your crown.
The old way of solving these problems was by building a bridge. Dental bridges are formed by fusing crowns together. For someone missing a tooth, a typical bridge would be three crowns wide.
To hold this crown in place, a dentist must reshape the two healthy teeth on either side of the gap in your smile. The crowns on the outside of your bridge would be bonded to those teeth.
Aside from the fact that you are damaging two good teeth to replace your missing one, dental bridges also present some other potential long-term issues.
By getting a bridge, two of your teeth are doing the work of three. That may not seem like much, but it does mean added stress and strain on those teeth. Over time, it can create new issues.
It’s also true that the bonding material for the bridge will wash away or wear down eventually. If your bridge breaks loose, it may be necessary to grind down more teeth and make an even bigger bridge to replace it.
There is another option for replacing your missing tooth. It does not involve grinding down healthy teeth, either.
You could get a dental implant, instead. Implants replace the roots of lost, missing, and extracted teeth. The implant can support your crown so you don’t need to do anything to the nearby teeth in most cases.
And if the crown does come loose decades from now, we can just put on a new one on the implant. Again, there’s no reason to do anything to the neighboring teeth to fix the problem.
Crowns for Infected Teeth
No one likes to talk about root canals, but they are the best way to remove painful infections from teeth. Fortunately, we also have ways to keep you pain-free during the procedure.
Once the infected tissue has been removed and a special material has been used to fill the inside of the tooth, you will want to restore its appearance and function.
A dental crown is often the best way to do that. Again, we can make a crown for you in our office, which means you can complete the procedure in less time.
You Deserve a Complete Smile
You shouldn’t live with a damaged tooth or an empty space in your smile. Letting these issues go could lead to bigger (and more expensive) problems in the future.
Instead, visit our Birmingham, MI dentist office to find out how a crown could restore your smile. You can request an appointment with our online form, or you can call us at 248-972-8720.