Dental Crowns and Bridges

Here is a quick guide on the types of dental crowns along with the advantages and disadvantages:

Zirconia Crowns: This is a perfect balance between strength and aesthetics. A single block of Zirconium Dioxide is used to fabricate the crown and can achieve a flexural strength of over 1200 MPa with good translucency.

At our clinic, we exclusively use German blocks and highly experienced lab technicians for fabrication.

Key advantages:

• High strength leads to a long life span and less wear overtime
• They are biocompatible
• Can achieve medium to high aesthetics

Porcelain Fused-to-Metal Crowns (PFM): These crowns are also very popular and affordable. The foundation of this crown is metal which provides excellent strength and coated with a porcelain layer for aesthetics.

Key advantages:

• They are durable and will function as desired for a very long time.
• With porcelain coating, they also provide good aesthetics.

Disadvantages:

• The porcelain coating can chip off exposing the metal.
• A grey silver metal line may be visible at the gumline.
• This type may not be suitable where the opposing teeth are close. In such cases, zirconia crowns are preferred or if affordability is prime, then a metal crown without the porcelain coating is advisable.

Lithium Disilicate Crowns: This type is advised when aesthetics is the prime motivation as they are made out of lithium disilicate which gives life-like aesthetics.

Key advantages:

• Excellent natural life-life appearance
• Best suitable for front teeth where aesthetics is of prime importance

It generally takes two sittings to complete the crown work, you can read about the detailed crown procedure here.

Maintenance of Crowns:

You can never replace your natural tooth, however crowns let you perform almost all tasks and you can eat normally with them.

• Maintain dental hygiene: Your gum line can recede or inflame causing food lodgement around the crown leading to several dental problems. Please keep the area clean, brush and floss twice daily.
• Avoid sticky and hard food: Such food can lead to chipping and even the crown can come off. In such cases, please save the crown and visit us asap to re-cement the crown.

Please call us at +91 96 50 98 3999 for more information or to set up an appointment.