Recognizing The Benefits of Dental Implants

If you have never had a dental crown on a tooth before, you are probably wondering how they stay put. There are temporary crowns, and there are permanent crowns. In both cases, the dentist will use something very different to adhere the crown to your tooth. Here is more on that particular process.

​The Damaged Tooth Becomes a Stump, Regardless of the Crown

​To get a crown to fit, your dentist has to grind the damaged tooth down to a stump. It really becomes nothing more than a nub of its former self. The crown, be it temporary or permanent, will not fit the tooth or your mouth without this first step completed. Then the dentist takes a mold of the stump-tooth so that the crown will pop right over the top of the stump-tooth.

​The Temporary Crown

​The temporary crown is molded from dental resin. It is not very strong and will probably not last more than a week- two weeks at best. That gives your dentist enough time to make the permanent crown. To get the temporary crown to stay on the tooth, a less permanent dental bonding agent is used.

The less permanent bonding agent is used because the dentist will eventually want to remove the temporary crown and replace it with the permanent one, and he/she does not want to power-drill his/her way through the temporary crown and bonding agent just to get the temporary crown off of the stump-tooth. Be very careful when biting and chewing with the temporary crown, as the resin has been known to crack and split, and the bonding agent used has been known to release the broken temporary crown. 

​The Permanent Crown

The permanent crown can be made from metal, porcelain over metal, resin (a much stronger version of the stuff used to make the temporary crown), pure porcelain, or a mix of resin and porcelain. Whichever version you choose determines the type of bonding adhesive the dentist uses. A slightly different adhesive is used for metal crowns than for porcelain ones, and a different adhesive for resin crowns. Do not worry; all of these dental adhesives will make the permanent crown stick fast. Once the crown is on the tooth, almost no adjustments can be made to the position of the crown over the tooth. The dentist may still shape the crown for a more natural bite alignment, but the crown is now stuck for good.

To learn more, contact a center like AQ Denture and Dental Implant Center.