Give Your Damaged Tooth the Royal Treatment

Crowns are all the rage these days. Whether it’s royal weddings or royal babies, The Crown on Netflix or the crown on that creepy Burger King, it seems Americans can’t get enough of our former monarchy. 

At Pound Ridge Cosmetic Dentistry, we’re more into another sort of crown, the tooth lifesaver kind. 

Sometimes a crown is the best option to restore a tooth. At Pound Ridge, we use crowns to repair teeth that are damaged and to anchor bridges onto adjacent healthy teeth. Just like a crown that is put atop a royal’s head, on a tooth a crown is a cap placed over the part of the tooth that sits above the gum line. Crowns can be made of either porcelain or metal alloy. 

Reasons to have a crown 

At Pound Ridge, Dr. Smith and Dr. Feng place crowns for a wide variety of purposes. We mainly use them to save a tooth that has extensive enough damage to endanger its long-term survival. But we can also use them for purely cosmetic reasons and crowns are the anchors for dental bridges.

These are the most common reasons a tooth could need a crown: 

•     If a tooth has a very large cavity
•     If a tooth is deeply cracked or worn
•     If a tooth just had a root canal procedure
•     If a tooth is abnormally small, oddly shaped, or very discolored

How are crowns placed? 

So, how do we place the crown and get it to stay put? Fitting and placing a crown at the Pound Ridge takes two appointments. Your first appointment is basically maintenance. We remove any decay or other area of the tooth that is not savable. If a tooth has extensive decay, the solution isn’t a simple filling because the filling will occupy too large an area and the tooth then won’t have the strength necessary for long-term chewing and biting. A crown is needed because that restores strength to the tooth and enables the patient to keep the natural tooth under the crown. 

After we have removed any decay or damage, we shave off some of the healthy portion of the tooth. This is necessary to make room for the crown to be fitted atop the tooth. Then we take dental impressions and send them off to the lab for the fabrication of your crown. While the crown is being made, we fit you with a temporary crown. This concludes your first appointment. 

Once the lab finishes your crown and ships it back to us, you return to our offices on Westchester Avenue for a second appointment. First, Dr. Smith or Dr. Feng checks the fit, making any adjustments needed. Then the crown is permanently cemented onto your tooth. Any final shaping and polishing are done, and you’re good to go. 

Now you know all about crowns beyond Westminster Abbey. Give your damaged or severely decayed tooth the royal treatment — have our team at Pound Ridge Cosmetic Dentistry place a crown on it. Call us at (914) 764-3540 to make an appointment.