Porcelain Crowns Procedure at 172 NYC Dental
Most dental crowns require two visits. As 172 NYC Dental evolves into its new space, we will be able to deliver your new crown in just one visit. The technology here is truly amazing. During your first appointment, we will remove the decayed and damaged portions of the tooth. Some of the tooth structure must also be removed across the surface of the entire tooth to accommodate the new dental crown. We then carefully clean the treatment site On occasion we will build up the broken tooth before we prepare it. This is known as placing a core. This procedure protects the pulp (nerve) of the tooth, makes the prep stronger and aids in the retention of the crown. Once we prepare the tooth, we use a 3D scanner to make fast and accurate digital impressions. Our top-of-the-line dental lab (on-site) uses these to create beautiful crowns that blend seamlessly with your natural teeth. While you wait for your permanent crown, we place a white acrylic temporary crown to cover the prepared tooth.
At your second appointment, we carefully fit and bond the dental crown onto your tooth using a specialized, flowable bonding material. This procedure of “bonding” a crown into place rather than the antiquated “cementing” a crown into place is a giant step forward in the fit (measured in tenths of millimeters), strength, and comfort of the crown. The bonding procedure takes place only with porcelain crowns; all crowns that contain metal must be cemented in. The crown is then gently buffed to ensure a comfortable fit and natural-looking appearance.
What Are Dental Bridges?
A bridge is a specialized dental prosthesis that replaces one or more missing teeth. The bridge is attached to the natural teeth on either side of the gap left by your missing teeth. A crown completely covers these supporting teeth to hold the bridge in place and provide additional strength.
Dental bridges offer a long-term solution to restore missing teeth. They return full function to your mouth and leave you with a natural-looking smile. So if a tooth is missing on the side of your mouth; the tooth in front of the space and the tooth behind the space is gently prepared to accept a crown. These two crowns (which are made in our lab) are joined by the missing tooth (false tooth or pontic). Then all three units, the two crowns (they are the abutments of the bridge) and the pontic are bonded into place as one piece composed of three units. It should be noted that dental implants are an option for the fixed bridge. In this case, a titanium root (implant) is placed in the space of the missing tooth without touching any of the surrounding teeth.
Once the implant osseous integrates with the bone a post and porcelain crown is made to complete the restoration. Our office offers a myriad of solutions depending upon the needs of the patient. In addition, we create removable bridges that replace many teeth, usually missing on both sides of the mouth. These bridges come in and out, don’t need crowns to be effective. The removable bridge’s infrastructure is made of cobalt chrome, acrylic, and porcelain teeth that lie on top of the pink acrylic which represents the patient’s gums. This prosthesis is held by clasps that hug the existing teeth in the mouth. These bridges have better retention than Full Upper or Lower Dentures but not as good as the fixed or implant supported bridges. The strong point of these bridges is their low cost and ability to restore many teeth in a very short period of time with a minimum of invasive work.
In a traditional bridge, the teeth abutting the space (missing tooth) are prepared for crowns, and then depending upon how many teeth are missing (one to three) a solid bridge is constructed that is composed of the crowns, anterior-posterior to space, and then the missing, false teeth that are connected to the crowns which gently lie on top of the gum tissue.
The implant-supported bridge uses implants (titanium false roots), which are gently torqued into the bone by our implantologist. Once the bone grows in and the abutment is screwed into the implant which looks like a post coming out of the gum. To this post, a porcelain crown can be made. If we have multiple implants, we can make a crown to restore each one of them or we can again make a porcelain bridge which would use the implants as abutments to hold the crowns and fill in the missing teeth with the pontics, just like a traditional bridge. When we construct a bridge with pontics the cost of the restoration goes down drastically, from the concept of replacing each missing tooth with an implant/abutment/crown. As dentists, we do what is best for each particular patient
Types of Bridges
- Traditional fixed bridge held by patients’ existing teeth
- Implant supported fixed bridges
- Implant supported removable bridges
- Traditional removable bridge held by patients’ existing teeth, no need for crown or implants
Most of the time the fixed bridges will be made of an inner core of Zirconia (for strength) and an outer layer of Emax (for maximum cosmetics). When we construct a porcelain bridge we as dentists have two major concerns; function and esthetics. When we work on front teeth (the six teeth going from cuspid to cuspid) the inner artistry that lies inside of us comes to the fore. We call this area of the mouth “the critical cosmetic zone”. And for good reason, for it is this area that people see first when we smile at them. There are many criteria that go into the creation of these porcelain masterpieces. First, we listen to the patient’s desires. At times they bring in photos of their smile from years ago or smiles that they hope to achieve now. We look at their gender, age, the shape of the face, hair color, skin tone, eye color, high and low smile lines, bone support and periodontal condition, existing teeth, and finances. We will offer treatment plans with several options.
Once the plan is agreed upon (including costs and financial obligations) our cosmetic dentist, along with his team, goes into action to create a beautiful, functioning, and harmonious restoration. A restoration that will give you confidence when eating, speaking and when enjoying a romantic interlude.
Learn More About Porcelain Bridges and Crowns at Our New York Office
Dental crowns and bridges are incredible solutions to restore missing or decayed teeth. If you would like to learn how our highly skilled dental team can help you, schedule your free consultation today to learn more about our porcelain crown and bridge procedures.
