Dental crowns: smile with confidence again

At Crofts Dental Practice, we take immense pride in our commitment to providing excellent dental and facial aesthetics treatment for the entire family. Our passion lies in creating healthy smiles that not only function flawlessly, but also exude confidence and beauty. With a warm and welcoming environment, our dedicated team aims to ensure that every patient leaves our practice with a happy and satisfied smile. As part of our patient-centred approach, we even have a special clinic catering to nervous patients, understanding that a trip to the dentist can be anxiety-inducing for some. One of our most popular restorative treatments is that of providing dental crowns Essex.

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What are dental crowns?

A dental crown, also known as a dental cap, is a prosthetic restoration that is designed to encase a damaged or weakened tooth, providing protection, strength, and improving its appearance. Dental crowns Essex are designed to complement your natural teeth and are added to a prepared tooth to fix any damage that has been caused.

How do dental crowns work?

In order to get a dental crown you will require a couple of appointments with us. During the first visit, our experienced dentist will carefully examine your teeth and prepare the tooth that needs a crown. The preparation involves reshaping the tooth to create enough space for the crown to fit over it snugly. In cases where the tooth is severely decayed or damaged, a filling material may be used to build up the structure of the tooth before crown placement. After preparing the tooth, our dentist will take impressions of your teeth, which will be sent to a dental laboratory to craft a custom-made crown that perfectly fits your tooth and bite. While you are waiting for your permanent restoration, our dentist will place a temporary crown to protect the prepared tooth. Once the dental laboratory completes the  permanent crown, you’ll return for your second appointment. Our dentist will remove the temporary crown that you had fitted. They will then ensure that your permanent one fits properly and looks wonderful! If everything is satisfactory, the crown will be permanently bonded to your tooth using dental cement, restoring the function and aesthetics of your smile.

Advantages of dental crowns

Dental crowns provide a protective barrier for weak or damaged teeth, preventing further deterioration and the need for extraction. They can also restore strength to a tooth that has undergone extensive decay or undergone a root canal procedure. With advancements in dental technology, crowns can be made to match the colour and shape of your natural teeth seamlessly. Once placed, they blend in so well that nobody will be able to tell you’ve had any dental work done. Dental crowns are also long lasting and can withstand the forces of normal chewing and biting. If you take care of them properly by brushing, flossing and having check-ups routinely with us, then they could last for years. If you have difficulty chewing due to a damaged tooth, a dental crown can significantly improve your ability to chew and eat comfortably. Dental crowns Essex not only restore function, but also enhance the appearance of your smile, boosting your confidence and self-esteem.

If you’re considering dental crowns to restore the health and beauty of your smile, we invite you to book an initial consultation at Crofts Dental Practice. Our team of skilled professionals will assess your dental needs, answer any questions you may have, and guide you through the process to ensure you achieve the smile you’ve always dreamed of. Don’t let damaged or weakened teeth hold you back from sharing your best smile with the world. With dental crowns, you can smile well and smile with confidence!

What to expect with CEREC technology with dental crowns

If you’re looking for a dental treatment that doesn’t require multiple appointments, CEREC technology may be the right choice for you. This technology allows for single-appointment dental crowns Essex, veneers and inlays/onlays. At Crofts Dental Practice, we use CEREC technology to create tooth-coloured restorations that are indistinguishable from natural teeth.

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What is CEREC technology?

CEREC technology is a CAD/CAM (computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing) system that is used to create dental crowns Essex, veneers and inlays/onlays. The system uses a special camera to take an impression of the tooth that needs to be restored. This digital impression is then used to create a 3D model of the tooth. From this model, the restoration is milled out of a block of ceramic material. The entire process can be completed within a single appointment.

Advantages of using CEREC technology

There are many advantages to using CEREC technology, including:

  1. Single-appointment treatments – with CEREC technology, there is no need for multiple appointments or temporary restorations. The entire treatment can be completed in just one visit to our dentist.
  2. Natural-looking results – the ceramic restoration milled out with CEREC technology can be matched to the colour of your natural teeth, resulting in a restoration that is virtually indistinguishable from your real teeth.
  3. Durable and long-lasting – the ceramic material used with CEREC technology is very strong and durable. With proper care, your restoration can last for many years.

What to expect when having CEREC treatment?

When you come to Crofts Dental Practice for a CEREC technology treatment, we will first take a digital impression of your tooth after removing any decay and tartar. We will then use this impression to create a 3D model of your tooth and fabricate the prosthetic, installing it the same day.

FAQs about CEREC technology treatments

  1. How long does the treatment take?

The entire treatment can be completed within just one visit to the dentist. The digital impression and 3D modelling usually take about 15 minutes. The restoration is then milled out of a block of ceramic material, which takes about 45 minutes for one of our dental crowns Essex.

  1. How much does the treatment cost?

The cost of the treatment will vary depending on the type of restoration being made. However, in general, CEREC technology treatments tend to be more affordable than traditional dental treatments.

  1. Is the treatment covered by insurance?

Most dental insurance plans will cover at least a portion of the cost of CEREC technology treatments. However, we recommend that you check with your insurance provider to confirm coverage.

  1. Are there any side effects?

There are no known side effects associated with CEREC technology treatments. However, as with any dental treatment, there is a small risk of complications such as tooth sensitivity or discomfort.

  1. How long does the restoration last?

With the proper care, your CEREC technology restoration can last for many years. However, it is important to note that the restoration is not indestructible and can be damaged just like your natural teeth.

Looking to restore your smile? Consider dental crowns

Many of us have looked for a way to improve or restore our smiles. Whether you have a minor dental imperfection, such as a small chip on your tooth, or a more complex one, like crowded or crooked teeth, your smile and, eventually, overall oral health can be affected. Therefore, at Crofts Dental Practice, we offer our patients dental treatments within general and cosmetic dentistry to help them on their journey to achieving a smile they can feel confident with.dental-crowns-essex5

Cosmetic dentistry at Crofts Dental Practice

At Crofts Dental Practice, we understand that it is important you have a smile that you can be happy with as it can affect your self-esteem along with your oral health. Through years of experience dealing with patients and their various dental issues, along with our team of qualified and highly experienced dental professionals, we can offer high-quality dental treatments within cosmetic dentistry. Cosmetic dentistry is the area of dentistry that focuses on improving the appearance of the teeth and uses dental treatments to enhance one’s smile.

Smile makeover at Crofts Dental Practice

For our patients who are not looking for a specific dental treatment but rather something that can change the appearance of their whole smile, our dental team can offer what is known as a smile makeover.

Smile makeovers use cosmetic dental treatments to improve your smile to your desired result. Prior to undergoing the smile makeover, you will be invited to have a free consultation at our practice as the treatment can vary from patient to patient.

Some of these makeovers may be simple and require one or a few dental treatments. For example, we may use fillings to change the shape of a tooth or dental veneers, which requires minimal preparation of the teeth.

However, if you currently deal with badly decayed or fractured teeth or notice that your teeth have become discoloured, you may want to consider having dental crowns Essex.

How general dentistry can help you to restore your smile

An oral crown is essentially a cap usually made of plastic, metal or, in some cases, a combination of ceramic and metal that ensures the crown is made to be as strong as possible.

Dental crowns Essex are placed over teeth that are either broken or weakened by decay to not only protect the remaining teeth but also restore their natural appearance. They are designed to be undetectable when placed next to your natural teeth, and, if looked after properly, this feature along with the crown itself can last for many years

Along with restoring teeth that are damaged or discoloured, dental crowns Essex can also be used to protect a tooth that has undergone a root canal treatment, allowing you to eat and chew food without worrying about any damage.

If you are unsure of which cosmetic dental treatments are best suited for your current dental issues, contact us at Crofts Dental Practice and we can recommend a suitable treatment for you after a thorough oral examination.

Restoring broken teeth with dental crowns in Essex

If you have a chipped or broken tooth, don’t panic, it is not the end of the world and it is very possible that we can save the tooth and not have to pull it out thanks to the clever use of dental crowns Essex. Crowns are commonly used to cap off a tooth after root canal therapy but they can also be used to reshape and hide a chipped tooth or even hold together a broken tooth that has been cracked, at Crofts Dental Practice we want to preserve as much of your natural teeth as possible, because extracting a tooth could mean needing dental implant surgery whereas fixing a crown to your tooth can be done in 1 – 2 appointments.dental-crown-in-essex

What is a crown?

A crown is a cap or covering that is placed over a tooth in order to restore it. It can be made from metal (as often seen in those with gold teeth), porcelain fused stainless steel, resin or ceramic. It provides a necessary restoration where the tooth would otherwise have to be removed.

For cracked, broken or chipped teeth

Cracked teeth – if a tooth becomes damaged due to facial trauma and is cracked all the way down the centre, particularly but not limited to the case of this happening to a molar. Then it is possible to hold that tooth together with a dental crown, by capping the top of the tooth with the right crown, dentists are able to save the tooth.

Broken and chipped teeth – teeth with large chips or breaks in them can be restored with dental crowns Essex in order to still keep their function. Nowadays these restorative crowns are either made from tooth-coloured resin which is filed and shaped to form the shape of the tooth before being hardened with light or they are made of tooth coloured ceramic which is bonded to the tooth. Both make convincing and seamless coverups that are not noticeable when smiling.

After root canal

In order to perform a root canal properly, dentists need to file and drill away much of the top of the tooth in order to get inside and clear out the infection, a crown needs to be placed on top of the remainder of the tooth in order to reshape it and make biting and chewing possible once more. At first, you will receive a temporary crown that can be removed in order for the dentist to make sure the infection is completely gone before fitting you with a more permanent one.

A cover job

Old amalgam and metal fillings can be unsightly when you laugh and dental crowns Essex are able to cover them up easily in order to restore the proper colour of one’s teeth, this is a more cosmetic use of crowns but is very effective none the less. Crowns are also used to hold a bridge of teeth in place when someone has two or more missing teeth in a row, a crown is fitted to each side of the bridge of false teeth and each crown is fixed to the teeth on either side of the gap for a seamless fit.

Dental crowns: a common dental restoration

We competently perform one of the most common kinds of restorative dentistry that takes place in a modern dental practice, which is dental crowns in Essex. They are used to fix teeth that have been broken, are weak due to excessive decay or because of a very large filling.

Dental Crowns in EssexKnown as the multi-taskers of dental work, dental crowns in Essex are used both restoratively to protect your tooth and cosmetically to enhance the appearance of your smile. If we have informed you that you need to get one of these ‘caps’ to fit over your teeth, then chances are that you are very likely to accidentally cause further damage to your tooth whilst eating and chewing. This can happen at any given time and is best to be avoided.

There is nothing wrong with getting one of these caps placed over the top of your teeth and dental crowns in Essex are a common restorative dental procedure that we frequently do to protect your teeth from further harm. They are coloured to look exactly like the natural hue of your tooth and are therefore invisible to see to the untrained eye. We are even able to tailor make every cap so that they suit your unique smile and teeth; there is no one size fits all for this kind of procedure.

Advances in technology

Previously, it was generally considered a somewhat lengthy and uncomfortable procedure for you when a crown needed to be fitted. You had to have moulds taken of your teeth which we then had to send away to a laboratory for the dental caps to be made and returned. They were then glued onto the teeth using a special cement.

With digital scanners and the innovative Cerec machine, this is a thing of the past. We first scan your teeth and then use these high quality images to construct a ceramic cap within a half hour using our in-house Cerec machine, meaning that the entire treatment can be done within the one appointment.

We use only the best materials to ensure longevity and durability of your cap. It is important to be able to provide you with a peace of mind when it comes to protecting your teeth from further harm as well as getting your time and money’s worth from your dental treatments with us.

If the materials are not of the best quality, there is a chance that after several years of wear and tear, the cap can come loose. This is considered to be a dental emergency and you should quickly present yourself to us in order to recover that exposed tooth.

When is this treatment a good option?

If you have discoloured fillings and would like to improve upon the appearance of your smile, then having a natural coloured cap covering these fillings or even replacing them is a very good option that we can offer you.

Alternatively, if you have had a root canal treatment, then you will need to have a crown to protect and cover that restored tooth. This allows you to bite and chew as if it were a real and fully functional tooth.

This treatment option is also used to anchor a denture or a bridge more firmly in place in your mouth. Their uses are really quite extensive and as such has been subject to rigorous testing to ensure quality and durability.

Your teeth can go on for longer

Dentistry in the 21st century is all about helping you to hang onto your teeth for life. For most of us that means our adult teeth are going to see at least 50 years of service.

We use our teeth every day and over time they do start to wear out. Plus there are certain things that can happen to them that could finish them off altogether, but we can extend their life with crowns. Here at Crofts Dental Practice in Essex, dental crowns are a versatile treatment that is used in several different ways.

Dental Crowns in EssexWhat is a crown?

A crown is a porcelain cover for your tooth. It fits down over the entire tooth, covering it completely right down to the gum. Crowns are custom-made to blend in with your other teeth, and no one but you will know they are not your natural teeth.

Abscesses

If you get an infection inside your tooth, it will probably show up first as incredible pain and an abscess under the gum. The way we treat an infected tooth is to clean out the infected pulp, which is the softest part of the inner tooth, right down into the root. We then fill the root and cover it with a crown so that you can continue to use it to eat with.

Crowns to cover up ugly fillings

If your tooth is mostly filling, the filling material can show through the enamel and make your tooth an unattractive colour. When a tooth gets to this stage, it may not be very strong either. We can cover the tooth over so that it looks good again and also to extend its chewing life.

Crowns for buttresses

If you have lost a tooth or two, we may recommend that you replace them with a bridge. This is one or more teeth suspended on a metal framework and anchored at either end by a healthy tooth covered in a crown. The healthy teeth have to be ground down to receive the crowns.

Dental porcelain does not respond to whitening so if you also want your teeth whitened, get that done first and then get the crown to match your whiter teeth.

Extending the life of your teeth

The aim of dentistry these days is to allow you to keep your natural teeth for as long as possible. We understand that nothing is ever as good as your own teeth, not only to do the job of eating, but also to keep your jawbone strong and healthy and your general health good.

Dentistry is getting better and better at extending the life of natural teeth. So good in fact, that people are taking a lot, sometimes even all, of their own teeth into their old age. Gone are the days when people were encouraged to have all their teeth removed in early adulthood, and replaced with dentures for life. Yes, this really did happen and not so long ago either, up to about 40 years ago, this practice was going on in the UK.

Dental Crowns in EssexInstead, we have all sorts of techniques up our sleeves for keeping teeth strong and healthy, even when they have taken a bit of a battering.

One method we use at Crofts Dental Practice, and actually it’s been around for ages, is dental crowns. In Essex, these little gems in the dentist’s toolkit have been around since the Etruscans – the ancient inhabitants of Tuscany in Italy, where no doubt people were always damaging their teeth on olive stones.

Getting crowns

The dental crown is an artificial cover for teeth that have had some kind of trauma, have been root treated, or have a very large filling in them. The crown slips over what remains of the tooth, to strengthen and protect it from further breakage.

Getting a crown fitted usually requires 2 appointments. One to examine and prepare the tooth. We need to make sure that the roots and surrounding bone are healthy, so we may take x-rays. Then, after administering a local anaesthetic, we file down the tooth to make room for the crown, or, if there’s really not much tooth left, we will build it up to allow it to fully support the crown. Then we make an impression of the tooth, and use this to make the crown out of porcelain colour-matched to your teeth. At the next appointment, we fit it and you are good to go.