Portland Dental Crown

When you get a dental crown, you are basically getting a cap for your tooth. Your tooth sometimes needs a bit of protection from decay, damage, or fracturing, and a crown offers this type of protection. The experienced dentists at Dougherty Laybourn Menashe Dental are trained in helping place dental crowns for many different situations, helping to restore your smile and bring back and protect the tooth that was in trouble.

Reasons You Could Need a Dental Crown

There are quite a few reasons you could face needing a dental crown, including:

These are some of the most common reasons that you could end up needing a dental crown. However, your dentist at Dougherty Laybourn Menashe Dental may suggest it for other reasons, as they see fit upon examination of your teeth.

Types of Dental Crowns

There are quite a few different types of dental crowns. You will need different crowns for different parts of your mouth, since the bite pressure of the different parts of your mouth varies. You need stronger materials for in the back of your mouth, and more delicate materials can be used in the front of your mouth where the bite pressure is lighter.

Crowns in the back of your mouth should be made of gold. This is the strongest material used in modern dental crowns, and it stands up very well to heavy bite pressure. It is durable, and long-lasting, plus the tissues of your mouth are quite adaptable to this type of material.

If you need a crown on the middle range of your teeth, a great option is porcelain that is fused to metal. It gives you the look of a natural tooth with the porcelain, but it is stronger due to its metal base. This is good for a medium bite pressure as it can still fracture, but is less likely to do so than porcelain alone.

For crowns on your front teeth, the ideal type of crown will be made of porcelain. It looks incredibly natural, and is hard to tell any difference between your natural tooth and the crown when looked at with the naked eye. These are delicate, however, and require gentle bite pressure to avoid breakage.

The Basics of a Dental Crown Procedure

When getting a dental crown, your tooth is going to need to be filled or repaired to the state it will be covered in. Then the surrounding tooth will be ground down enough to receive the cap, or crown. A mold will be made of the area so that the crown can be matched up to your specific needs, and a temporary crown will be placed over the tooth. A laboratory will create the crown and send it back to our office. We then have you come back in and we place the permanent crown where the temporary crown was situated. After a few adjustments, we cement the crown in place, and you are good to go!

The dentists at Dougherty Laybourn Menashe Dental can get you started with a crown at your first appointment if we know you are going to need one. Give our offices a call and set up your appointment to meet up with one of our dentists today!