While dental crowns may not have the luster of the crowns of royalty, they can have a powerful effect on saving your smile. Often when we don’t take proper care of our teeth, they can wear away and lose their strength and shape. There are a number of things that can contribute to tooth decay including skipping regular dental visits, eating hard candy and the obvious: not brushing one’s teeth.

When our teeth wear away, break off, or deteriorate due to cavities, we can place a crown to cover, protect or restore the broken or decayed teeth. A dental crown is essentially a cap that is placed over your teeth and are a sort of “last resort” for a tooth that has too much damage for a normal filling to fix.

There are several reasons why you would need a dental crown, including:

• You have a failing tooth
• To keep a dental bridge in place
• A chipped, cracked or broken tooth
• To cover up a filling
• Hide discolored, unpleasant looking teeth.
• To disguise a dental implant
• Dental crowns can cover teeth that don’t have a pleasing appearance. For example, you may need to cover teeth that are discolored.
• You may need a dental crown to cover a root canal.

In your father’s day, technology was such that these special tooth caps had to be made of metal with a simple porcelain overlay to mimic the look of a normal and real tooth. But the metal underneath caused the crown’s look to worsen considerably over time. Some of you may have this type of crown or have seen it in others. The aging of the crown can be seen even just while talking as metal is exposed at the gum line or in the way the color or stain of your crowned tooth just doesn’t match the rest.

The material that your crown is made of is dependant on many factors, such as severity of tooth decay or location of the tooth in your mouth, but generally, crowns are made up of the following:

• Porcelain, usually more esthetically pleasing
• Acrylic, durable and natural looking
• Metal: gold, nickel or chromium

Porcelain or all acrylic crowns do a much better job of being inconspicuous among the rest of your teeth and give off a much more natural look.

Dental crowns can generally be placed in a couple of visits. And if properly taken care of, can last for years without being replaced. Call our Tehachapi dental office to see if your mouth deserves a crown.