Dental Crowns near Fairfield

A crown is a custom cap that covers the entire visible portion of a tooth, restoring its shape, strength and appearance. Dentists recommend crowns when a tooth has lost too much structure for a filling to hold: a large cavity, a crack, a fracture from an accident, heavy wear from grinding, or a tooth weakened by root canal treatment. A well-made crown lets you chew normally again, protects the remaining tooth from splitting, and looks like it belongs.

At Regency Dental Group most crowns are all-ceramic or porcelain. These materials reflect light the way enamel does and are matched to the shade of your neighboring teeth, so there is no gray edge at the gumline that older porcelain-fused-to-metal crowns are known for. For most single crowns we use our CEREC system to design and mill the crown in the office in a single visit. For cases that call for a laboratory, such as some highly esthetic front teeth or multi-unit work, we take a digital scan and place a temporary while a dental lab fabricates the final crown, usually within two weeks.

Crowns are also the visible part of two other restorations: a dental bridge, which uses crowns on neighboring teeth to hold a replacement tooth, and a dental implant, where a crown is attached to a titanium post in the jaw. Understanding crowns helps you understand the options we may discuss for a missing tooth.

The decision between a large filling and a crown is one we make with you, not for you. Dr. Carter will show you the tooth on the intraoral camera, explain how much healthy structure remains, and give you his honest assessment of how each option is likely to hold up over the next decade. A crown costs more than a filling up front, but on the right tooth it prevents a fracture that could otherwise mean a root canal or an extraction.