For millions of people, dental crowns have been the ideal restoration for restoring the beauty and function of their natural teeth. No two patients are identical, but many of those satisfied patients chose crowns for similar reasons. Here are some of the reasons people choose dental crowns near you:
- If you have a badly cracked or otherwise weakened tooth
- If your tooth is broken or severely worn down
- If your tooth has a very large filling or multiple fillings
- To provide support for a dental bridge
- To correct a misshapen tooth that can’t be corrected with dental bonding
- To cover teeth affected by discolouration or stains that can not be bleached away
- To replace a missing tooth via a dental implant
Crowns provided by your dentist in Livonia are hollow caps that completely surround a tooth from the tooth’s biting surface and all the way to the edge of your gums and completely around the circumference of your tooth. Those crowns fit so tightly and are bonded to the tooth so powerfully that they can lend support to a damaged or weakened tooth to restore complete dental function or even make it possible to replace missing teeth with a dental bridge.
Millions of people walk around every day with dental crowns in their mouth without concern, anxiety or complication. The complication-free nature of dental treatment with crowns is possible in part because dentists are careful to carefully confirm that patients are good candidates for dental crowns compared to other alternatives. Like just about every dental and medical procedure, complications are possible albeit exceedingly rare.
What are the potential problems with dental crowns?
Teeth that have been newly crowned may be unusually sensitive after local anesthetic applied by your dentist wears off, especially if the tooth being crowned still contains a nerve. (In some cases, like when a crown is used to finish off a root canal, the tooth being crowned may have no nerve in it.)
If some of the cement that bonds your crown to your tooth erodes and is washed out from between your crown and your tooth, your crown may feel loose. That’s a potentially more serious issue than it sounds. Not only will your tooth be unprotected if the crown comes off completely, but the gap between your crown and tooth suggested by that looseness may leave your tooth vulnerable to bacteria and tooth decay until the crown is re-cemented.
In some cases, so much cement is lost that the crown comes off your tooth completely. In other cases, the crowned tooth may have become decayed to the point that the crown can not grip the tooth tightly enough to remain in place. If your crown does come off completely, contact your dentist’s office right away. A dentist near you will describe how to temporarily return the crown to your tooth using dental adhesive while you await an appointment for an evaluation and a repair or replacement of that crown.
If your crowns are of the porcelain-fused-to-metal (PFM) type, you may over time notice a thin dark line next to your gums. That’s not an indication of a flaw in your crowns, but is simply the normal appearance of the metal material underneath the porcelain layer of your PFM crown. Unless there is some sort of damage to your PFM crown, the appearance of that thin dark line doesn’t mean anything has to be done. If the appearance of that thin dark line is tainting the cosmetic appearance of your teeth and smile, though, your dentist can replace it with a crown made entirely from ceramic or porcelain materials.
Metals used to create some types of crowns — PFM crowns an example — are usually amalgams of different types of metals. Allergic reactions to those metals are possible, albeit extremely rare. If you have any known allergies, be sure to discuss those with your dentist while developing a treatment plan to provide dental crowns in Livonia. Your dentist will take all known risks into account, and can perform tests to identify any unknown risks of allergic reactions to the materials from which your crowns are made.