"What Is A Crown And Do I Need One?"

To put it simply, if you have a large filling in the tooth, the tooth is weaker. In the illustration in the video, you can see it covers about one-third of the distance. The reason I drew it like this is because this is typically what fillings look like in illustrations. Today, fillings are white, but you get the idea here. When one-third of the biting surface is occupied by a filling, the tooth is more likely to break. Sometimes, this is why a crown is recommended. Usually, we recommend a crown when there's either a symptom, like a broken tooth, or when there's decay that needs treatment.

Often, in our office, when we recommend a crown, it's because one of these cusps has broken off. This is a common scenario we encounter. Why? Because we see large fillings in the practice every day. Take this tooth, for example, in the X-Ray shown in the video. This tooth is almost entirely covered by a large silver filling, likely placed about 20 years ago. What happened is that one part of the tooth that was left actually fractured off, and now, to fix this tooth, a crown is needed to hold it together. A crown involves removing a small layer from the outside of the tooth, so in this case, it would make the tooth look somewhat like what's shown in the video. We remove a small layer, and then we use a perfect porcelain or sometimes a gold crown to restore the tooth, which looks much better than my drawing.

If you have more questions about this topic, please don't hesitate to contact our office.