Crowns & Bridges | Boerne
Restore & Protect Your Smile
With a crown or bridge from Complete Dental Studio, you can protect, replace, and even repair badly damaged or decaying teeth while preventing other dental issues from occurring, such as jaw problems, misaligned bite, and excessive wear on your teeth.
The Marvel of Porcelain Crowns & Bridges
Dental technology has come so far over the past few years. One of the greatest advancements has been the variety of dental materials now used for many types of dental restorations.
One of the most popular of these is porcelain. Dental porcelain not only closely resembles the shade of your natural teeth — it’s also remarkably strong and durable.
In particular, porcelain has transformed the ability of crowns and bridges to solve a variety of dental problems with natural-looking, long-lasting results.
What Are Dental Crowns?
A crown — also known as a “cap” — is a dental restoration designed to cover the entire surface of your tooth, from the top of the tooth to the gum line.
Rather than remove a damaged or decayed tooth, Dr. Thompson may recommend a crown to save your tooth. Crowns can also provide additional protection for a tooth that has undergone a root canal.
Porcelain crowns blend in with your natural smile, are custom-made to fit your tooth, and typically last for many years.
What Problems Do Crowns Solve?
Our team at Complete Dental Studio can use dental crowns to treat a wide variety of issues, including:
Broken Tooth
If you have a broken tooth, you’ll need it fixed right away to avoid other more serious problems from occurring. Fortunately, crowns are a great choice — and many times the only choice — for repairing a broken tooth.
Badly Decayed Tooth
If you have a tooth that experiences severe decay, you likely need a crown. Although a filling is usually adequate for repairing a cavity, a crown may be better if the decay is so severe that removing it leaves too little of the natural tooth structure to support a filling.
Missing Teeth
Crowns also act as replacements for your missing teeth. As such, they’re often used in other dental restorations and appliances as well, including dental implants and dental bridges.
Tooth With a Root Canal
When infection forms in the pulp of your tooth, our dentists will typically recommend a root canal. This procedure removes the decay, as well as the pulp and the nerves of the tooth.
However, a root canal can weaken the structure of your tooth, which is why many dentists recommend placing a crown over the top of the tooth after the root canal is complete to provide both additional protection and strength to your tooth.
Tooth With an Old Filling
Old fillings — particularly those made from silver amalgam — typically require replacing after several years.
But in many cases, removing the filling doesn’t leave much of your natural tooth behind. In these instances, a crown can very effectively restore your tooth to its full functionality.
What Are Dental Bridges?
If you’re missing one or more teeth, it’s important to choose a method to replace those teeth as soon as possible. If you don’t, you could face a multitude of other more serious dental issues, including:
- Shifting teeth
- Misaligned bite
- Excessive wear on other teeth
- Jaw problems
One of the most popular solutions for replacing missing teeth is the dental bridge. Consisting of one or more artificial teeth — or crowns — mounted onto a metal frame, bridges are typically held in place in your mouth by anchoring teeth on each side of the bridge.
To provide further strength to those teeth, it’s common for the dentist to affix a crown on the top of the natural teeth, thereby providing a sturdy support for the bridge.
Let’s take a look at the three types of bridges:
Fixed Bridge
This type of bridge attaches to a crown on either end that is cemented onto your existing natural teeth.
Maryland Bridge
This type of bridge attaches to a metal frame with tooth-colored brackets on each end. Those brackets are bonded to your natural abutment teeth.
Cantilever Bridge
This type of bridge is intended for use in situations where only one natural abutment tooth is available to support the bridge. This bridge consists of two teeth with crowns that are next to each other and located on the same side as the missing tooth space.
What Problems Do Bridges Solve?
While it’s true that dental bridges serve one main purpose — to replace one or more missing teeth — they provide you with many benefits and prevent a variety of problems from occurring, including the following:
Chewing Food Properly
If you’re missing one or more teeth, it’s difficult to adequately chew your food. This may limit the types of food you can eat — and it may also negatively impact your digestive system if you aren’t able to adequately chew.
Enhancing Your Smile
Having an attractive smile makes you feel better about yourself by improving your self-confidence and self-esteem. And researchers have also found that if you smile more, you actually feel better!
Improving Your Speech
If missing teeth are impeding your ability to speak clearly, it can make you feel embarrassed and uncomfortable in social situations.
Maintaining a good social life can improve your overall health. A dental bridge can help you speak normally and restore your confidence in social situations.
Preventing Bone Loss
Losing teeth — even losing a single tooth — can compromise the health of your jawbone. That’s because bone tissue needs to be stimulated in order to remain healthy.
Normally, that stimulation is provided by the roots of your teeth. So if those roots are no longer doing their job, your jawbone can weaken and deteriorate over time.
Find the Right Treatment for You
If you have dental problems, it helps to understand your options. Dr. Thompson, Dr. Alghadban, and our expert team can assess your mouth and diagnose any complications to help determine if crowns, bridges, or other another treatment will best fit your needs.