Crowns
Give your smile the royal treatment with long-lasting dental crowns. Dr. Choi can restore the shape and size, and improve the strength and appearance of your teeth with a dental crown. For a natural look, crowns can be made with strong and long-lasting materials that look indistinguishable from actual teeth.
What are Dental Crowns?
A dental crown is a tooth-shaped "cap" that is cemented over a tooth covering the entire visible portion of a tooth that lies at and above the gum line. For a natural look, crowns can be made from ceramic, all resin, porcelain-fused-to-metal, and matched to your surrounding teeth.
Crowns can also be made from metal, including gold and nickel-based alloys. Dr. Choi can advice you on the right option for you.
Dr. Choi may recommend a dental crown for the following reasons:
To protect a weakened tooth from breaking or to hold together parts of a cracked tooth
To restore an already broken tooth or a tooth that has been severely worn down
To cover and support a tooth with a large filling when there isn't a lot of tooth left
To hold a dental bridge in place
To cover misshapened or severely discolored teeth
To cover a dental implant
What Are "Onlays" and "3/4 Crowns?"
Onlays and 3/4 crowns cover only a portion of the underlying tooth as opposed “traditional” dental crowns that cover it entirely. Porcelain and resin-based crowns are color matched to surrounding teeth. Like crowns, a mold will be taken of the area and sent to a lab for your onlay or 3/4 crown to be created.
Porcelain-fused-to-metal
Porcelain-fused-to-metal dental crowns can be color matched to your adjacent teeth, unlike metallic crowns. Next to all-ceramic crowns, porcelain-fused-to-metal crowns look most like normal teeth. These crowns can be a good choice for front or back teeth.
All-Resin
All-ceramic or all-porcelain dental crowns provide the best natural color match than any other crown type and may be more suitable for people with metal allergies. However, they are not as strong as porcelain-fused-to-metal crowns and they wear down opposing teeth a little more than metal or resin crowns. All-ceramic crowns are a good choice for front teeth.
Metal
Crowns can be made of gold alloy, or other metal based-alloys like palladium or nickel. Compared with other crown types, less tooth structure needs to be removed, and there is less wear to opposing teeth with metal crowns. Metal crowns also tend to the last the longest in terms of wear, and rarely chip or break.