Crowns

Restoring your smile’s natural beauty

Each of our 32 natural teeth was designed and positioned to share the task of chewing and smiling with incredible beauty and efficiency. Crowns and bridges were developed to restore badly damaged or missing teeth to their natural beauty and performance.

A crown – sometimes called a cap – is usually made of gold, porcelain, or a special plastic material. We prepare the tooth for an impression and plaster model so our dental laboratory can create a custom-fitted crown that looks and functions like your real tooth. Once we permanently cement the new crown into place, your smile will look, feel, and work exactly as nature designed it to.

A bridge is a combination of crowns and artificial teeth. Bridges can close the gap left by one or more missing teeth, restoring the look of your smile, and redistributing the workload more evenly. Others are permanently bonded to your healthy teeth with crowns. In some cases, we might suggest an artificial tooth implanted right into your jawbone.

Sometimes we can use crowns and bridges to prevent damage along with more extensive and costly dental work. For example, if we wait until a large filling falls apart, we risk weakening the nerve of the tooth or fracturing the root. Early, preventive treatment on a high-risk tooth not only saves time and money, but it may also save your tooth.

Gain a confident smile with crown & bridge treatment

Crowns and bridges. The very words denote power and strength. That’s fitting because crown and bridge restorations are meant to boost your smile power while strengthening the structure of your smile.

Crowns are sometimes called caps because they fit over your teeth to support them and to improve their appearance. They are usually made of natural-looking translucent porcelain and are designed to blend in so well with neighboring teeth that no one can tell that you have them.

Where does the bridge come in? When you have one or more missing teeth, replacement teeth fill in – or bridge – the gap. One or both supporting teeth on either side may require crowns to make them strong enough to support the replacement.

You may require a crown if a tooth has:

• been extensively damaged by decay
• become weakened because there is more filling than tooth
• been fractured, compromising its structural integrity
• become discolored and detracts from your smile
• undergone root canal treatment
• the role of supporting a bridge.

Crown and bridge restorations can benefit you in so many ways – enhanced appearance, improved ability to eat and speak … and renewed self-confidence. We invite you to call for a consultation. Your confident smile is always a jewel in your crown!

Ensuring proper care and maintenance for crowns & bridges

Crowns and bridges cover most of the tooth surface, but it’s the area you cannot see that offers the greatest potential for problems. Where the crown meets your natural tooth, usually at or below the gumline, is called the margin. The margin usually has a small ridge where plaque and bacteria may collect. If even the slightest amount of decay develops under your crown, it can progress unchecked as our normal radiographs cannot see through a crown.

Bridges provide some additional challenges as it’s important to remove any plaque that may build up under the replacement teeth to prevent inflammation, bad tastes, and bad breath. In most cases we provide special cleaning tools such as small brushes, floss threaders, or irrigation devices to assist with meeting the unique cleaning challenges presented by both crowns and bridges.

Adequate time spent at proper maintenance will lead to years of service and usefulness by your crown and bridge. If you aren’t sure what special techniques your teeth require, ask us at your next visit. We’re happy to help!

Crown & bridge treatment

Even though you diligently brush and floss, you may still lose a tooth, and if this happens, you should replace it … and not just for appearance.

When you lose a tooth to decay, injury, or gum disease, the neighboring teeth all have to work a lot harder to get the job done. If the missing tooth is not replaced, the teeth around the gap will shift and move around. That puts them in danger, and without treatment, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually find more gaps in your smile.

One of the best ways to bring back your smile is crown and bridge treatment. If you have a compromised tooth but there’s still healthy tooth left, you may benefit from a crown. For lost teeth, we build a dental bridge that spans the spaces left by missing teeth and supports replacement teeth. Bridges can be made of gold, porcelain-faced gold, or all porcelain depending on where they’ll be placed. It’s custom designed by a lab technician and we take care to match color and appearance and to restore your bite so neighboring teeth don’t have to work overtime.

The end result is a healthy happy smile for many years to come.

For your oral health and beauty

Nature designed your jaw to hold 32 teeth. When they’re all healthy, in the right place, and working correctly, a smile is a marvel of beauty and efficiency. But, when the wear and tear of daily life has left your smile damaged, we can restore it to its natural beauty and performance. In many cases, crowns and bridges are the champion restorations for worn, fractured, or missing teeth.

A crown cloaks or caps a damaged tooth to lend support and is fabricated to our exact specifications by a skilled laboratory technician. The natural tooth is prepared to provide a smooth, decay-free platform for the crown. We’ll take an accurate impression or digital scan of the tooth and its adjacent and opposing teeth so that the new crown will work as your natural one did.

You’ll wear a temporary acrylic crown until the permanent crown is placed. Strong and durable, crowns can provide years of healthy service with thorough daily brushing and flossing and regular dental appointments.

Bridges are a combination of crowns and artificial teeth that fill a gap left by one or more missing teeth. When a tooth goes missing, the gap it leaves behind not only greatly reduces your smile-power, it also puts extra stress on the neighboring teeth which can weaken over time. A bridge ensures that all teeth are sharing the job of chewing equally.

Brighten your smile with a consultation.

With crowns & bridges

At some point in our adult lives, many of us will lose a tooth to injury, decay, or gum disease. When that happens, chewing force in the back can shift to the front or opposite side, and these teeth can flare out, causing unwanted spaces and changing the very structure of your smile.

Teeth adjacent to the missing tooth may drift out of position, creating a domino effect that can seriously alter the look of your face. When teeth are not replaced, wrinkles and lines can form causing premature aging. We can restore and even improve a smile using a combination of crowns and bridges to support or even replace lost teeth.

A crown is a restoration that covers or caps a tooth to protect and restore it to its normal shape and size while strengthening and improving the appearance of your tooth. A bridge is used to replace one or more missing teeth. The bridge spans the gap left by the missing tooth and is usually anchored to the two existing teeth on either side of the gap. Bridges can be made of gold, porcelain-faced gold, or all porcelain depending on structural requirements and where they’ll show up in your smile.

If you’re having a problem with one or more of your teeth, we’ll help you decide which treatment is best to restore your teeth to normal function.

With porcelain crowns

Our teeth are among our most durable and hardworking body parts. And when they’re treated to life-long tender loving care, they give us bright happy smiles! But our teeth are vulnerable not only to neglect, but also to the natural process of aging.

When you look at your teeth, what you see is the white enamel which crowns the tooth. Over the years, your natural crown can be damaged or altered by many factors. It may become cracked or weakened by excessive wear or by decay, discolored by root canal treatment or by health factors and medicines, or become unsightly due to older fillings.

We can restore your damaged teeth – and greatly improve their strength, appearance, and longevity – with custom-fitted porcelain crowns which allow us to achieve the color and contour of your natural teeth. All-porcelain crowns have a natural translucency that makes it incredibly difficult to tell them from your natural teeth.

Are porcelain crowns the right option for your teeth and smile? Please call for a consultation!

Fill those gaps!

Patients are pleasantly surprised at our reaction when we initiate discussion about their missing teeth. We’re never shocked – even when teeth have been missing for twenty years or more! We’re just happy to see an end to anxiety and embarrassment.

A missing tooth was once regarded as a solution and not as a problem – especially if hidden at the back of the mouth. Goodbye tooth pain – hello relief! What we’ve since learned is that this strategy can create a constellation of other challenges.

• If only a single gap exists, the natural stability of the bite will be lost as surrounding teeth drift to fill it. This includes the tooth on the opposite jaw directly below or above the missing one … it tends to over-erupt, creating space between its neighbors and losing its supporting bone.
• As teeth move, they can also tilt, altering the facial structure and appearance as well as the ability to chew and speak clearly.
• Bite problems or TMJ can lead to headaches and other discomfort. This natural process occurs whether you have lost one tooth or many … at the front of your mouth or at the back.

Thankfully, with increased understanding comes workable solutions. We offer affordable fixed or removable dental prosthetics such as bridges and dentures. If you have gaps in your smile, our team will be happy to answer any questions you might have so that you can, once again, smile with confidence.

Ensuring longevity of your crown & bridge

Restoration materials and techniques have continuously improved over the years, but even so, your crown or bridge does require maintenance if it is to last its expected lifespan of 10-15 years.

What are crowns and bridges? A crown covers a tooth to protect and restore it to its normal shape and size while strengthening and improving appearance. A bridge replaces one or more missing teeth by spanning a gap, and is anchored to teeth on either side (or both sides) of the gap.

1. Maintain your home care. Tooth decay and problems associated with gum disease are the major cause of tooth and restoration loss. If your gums recede, if you lose underlying bone, or if you lose tooth structure, your restoration will no longer fit. This means the expense of replacement and the expense of a potentially greater cost … your oral and systemic health. We can offer demonstrations and special cleaning tools to help you achieve excellent hygiene care.
2. Wear a mouthguard to protect your teeth and restorations. Our custom-fitted mouthguards are superior to off-the-shelf products. If you play any sport during which there is any chance for contact with another person or an object, you need a mouthguard.
3. Watch what you eat. Biting into extremely hard foods can break teeth and restorations. Top offenders are popcorn, olive pits, chewy bread crust, hard or very sticky candy, ice, and … opening food packages with your teeth.
4. Switch to a low-sugar diet. Reduce the incidence of decay which will compromise teeth and put stress on restorations.
5. Ask for help. Please call us for a home care routine review, to examine the state of a current restoration, or to ask if a crown or crown and bridge treatment might be what you need to brighten your smile.

Crown and bridge treatment for your smile

What is crown and bridge treatment? – A crown is a restoration that covers or caps a single tooth to help strengthen and restore its normal shape and size. Crown and bridge treatment is when there is a gap left from a missing tooth (or teeth) and a replacement tooth fills in the gap and is permanently fixed to the adjacent tooth (on one or both sides of the space). To ensure it’s strong enough to do its own work and that of the replacement tooth, we crown the adjacent tooth.

Could you be a candidate for crown treatment? When teeth are broken or cracked, structurally weakened by large fillings or root canal treatment, or that are misshapen or severely discolored, they can be transformed and supported by a crown.

Could you be a candidate for crown and bridge treatment? Spaces left by missing teeth can cause surrounding teeth to drift, change your bite, encourage cavities, and spoil your smile. Crown and bridge treatment is a preventive measure to avoid more complex and expensive treatments later. And of course, boost your appearance and increase your self-esteem.

Will the crown or crown and bridge match my teeth? High-tech materials result in a strong natural-looking restoration custom-made to match your smile. We will color match your restoration so that it blends in with the rest of your smile.

Questions? We’re always open to helping you smile more!

You can smile right back with confidence

In one study, 94% of the participants reported that they notice a person’s smile first – not their eyes, their height, or their shape. If you have gaps in your smile, or have teeth that are badly worn, fractured, or otherwise damaged, crowns and bridges are a tried-and-true practical solution that will have you smiling right back at anyone!

A crown is a restoration that covers a tooth to protect and strengthen it and to improve its appearance. A bridge spans the gap left by a missing tooth, anchoring a replacement tooth to either one or two existing teeth on either side of the gap.

Fixed (non-removable) bridges are usually the first choice for patients, along with porcelain crowns or replacement teeth. The porcelain is translucent, just like natural teeth.

Whether you want to replace one tooth or more, crowns and bridges will keep your smile looking great! Here are some of the advantages.

Crowns and bridges…

• look and function like natural teeth
• prevent more extensive damage and more costly repairs
• restore natural biting and chewing capacity
• will not shift and does not require adhesives
• can be shaped, sized, and positioned to dramatically improve the look and function of your teeth.

Please call us for a consultation. We really can help you to get your best smile back!

Crown & bridge treatment

Improving your smile enhances more than appearance. True, repairing structural problems like missing teeth with crowns and bridges can only make you look better … even your best. But when function is restored, so will your ability to chew, speak, and socialize freely.

Here are some crown and bridge facts.

• A crown is a cap that covers a damaged tooth. It helps restore its normal shape and size and strengthens it.
• When a replacement tooth is required to fill a gap, it can be affixed permanently with a bridge attached to the teeth on either side of the space.
• If a space is left untended, the surrounding teeth will drift, alter your bite, encourage cavities, and negatively affect your appearance beyond the original gap.
• High-tech materials along with custom fitting result in a strong natural-looking restoration.
• It takes only one or two visits to the dentist to restore your smile and prevent further problems.
• No one will know you have a crown and/or bridge unless you tell them.

Could you benefit from crown and bridge treatment? You may be an excellent candidate. Ask us!