Porcelain Crowns easily explained by a South East London dentist
05 / 03 / 2010
A Porcelain Crown is just that, a crown, says a South East London dentist. We all associate a crown as a piece of headgear worn by a king or queen and that is exactly what a tooth crown is, a piece of head covering. That can mean a top crown that is made to replace a part of a tooth that is damaged by a crack or even worse, a chipped tooth. The advances in dentistry science have made it possible to take the top and sides off a tooth, and then simply replace the ground down part of the tooth with the crown. This method is also used to cover the front of a tooth in whole, which can also repair and hold a crack, or cover up a discoloured tooth or a chip. In a lot of cases it can also slightly reduce gaps and cover misaligned teeth. Using porcelain as a material for the crown has a lot of advantages for the technician who makes them to order. Allowing the technician to build up the thickness by layering the porcelain makes the false tooth look more realistic, it also allows the whiteness to be controlled so that it fits in with the other teeth that will lie below, and to the side of the crown. The porcelain is a clay material and when baked it sets rock hard, which makes it easy to cement onto the existing tooth and hard wearing enough to last many years, usually without any or little maintenance. The procedure is in two sittings generally; at the first the dentist prepares the tooth to take the crown, which may mean grinding and roughing the surface. Then an impression is taken and the crown made. At the second sitting the tooth is cleaned and the crown fitted in place.
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