A client came to see us for a healthy mouth review and consultation. He had been getting food stuck between is back teeth and found that he was always having to use tooth picks to fish out bits of food which often made his gums bleed.
On assessing the area we found that he had quite a significant gap between his last two teeth. This had resulted in bits of food getting stuck between the teeth every time he ate. The food also caused his gums to become inflammed, so everytime he tried to pick the food out the gums would bleed. We took an x-ray of his tooth and noted that due to the food wedging in between his teeth it had also started to decay. The tooth already had a very large mercury filling and this was also starting to fail due to the decay caused by food packing. The mercury filling was so large that replacing the filling would simply weaken the already fragile tooth. As this was also a chewing tooth there was already alot of pressure on it and it could break.
Due to the fragile nature of the tooth we decided to discuss the options of crowning the tooth. The crown would encapsulate the whole tooth giving it strength. It would act rather like a bomb shelter protecting the tooth underneath.
Crowns can be mad of metal or can be tooth coloured. The tooth coloured crowns can be either metal ceramic crowns or all-ceramic crowns. The metal ceramic crowns have been around for a long time, the downside is that they can be weaker and also not look as life-like as the all-ceramic crowns. The all-ceramic crowns (porcelain crowns) are very strong and are the best in aesthetics.
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