What To Do When Your Dental Crown Needs Help

One of the most effective and versatile dental restorations you can get is a dental crown. These caps are shaped and colored to look like a healthy tooth. If you have a bad cavity, chips, cracks, or just weak enamel, a dental crown can help.

However, dental crowns can occasionally give you problems of its own after they’ve been used over and over again for years. While your dental crown will give you many years of solid service, nothing lasts forever. And if your dental crown is going bad, you’ll need to replace it before your tooth gets cavities, infections, and worse.

Call our Burke, VA dental office today at 703-978-5253 and schedule your next appointment to have that dental crown checked out. Dr. Fox is expertly trained in dental crown procedures, so he can determine the best way to fix things.

Dental Crowns Are Not Permanent

Typically, your dental crown will last 10-15 years before anything needs to be fixed. However, that’s just an average. If you eat right and take good care of your teeth, your dental crowns could last a lot longer.

But if you don’t take good care of your teeth, that dental crown can start having problems sooner. If you eat a lot of hard food (like hard pretzels, candy, or even ice), then you’re damaging your enamel and dental work. Failing to brush can make this worse and even stain your dental crown.

Regardless of how well you take your dental health seriously, your dental crown will eventually start to fail. That’s simply because no dental restoration is permanent. You have to tear, crush, and mash food with your teeth repeatedly, every day, every year. That’s a lot of literal pressure to put dental crowns through. So the older you get, the more likely you will need to replace that old dental crown.

Problems You Might Have With Your Dental Crown

Why can’t you just learn to live with it? Here are three of the biggest problems you can have with an old dental crown.

– Your dental crowns come off your tooth.

Dental crowns are bonded with your teeth using a strong, non-toxic adhesive. This has to be strong or your dental crown would come off whenever you chewed somethings sticky or chewy. But over time, that bonding agent begins to weaken.

Normally, you know this is happening when the crown begins to wiggle a bit on your tooth. However, it’s possible for the bond to give suddenly, leaving you with an exposed tooth and a dental crown in your hand.

– Your dental crown gets damaged or discolored.

The material used to make your dental crown is not just pretty – it’s very durable. It does a great job of mimicking enamel. But just how enamel can be damaged, so can your dental crown. Sports injuries can do that, but so can chewing on very hard stuff like ice. This can wear down the crown until it breaks.

Then there are stains. Because a dental crown is so much like a natural tooth, anything dark that can stain your teeth (such as coffee, wine, and tomato sauce) can stain your dental crown as well.

– You have a cavity growing underneath your dental crowns.

When you get a dental crown placed atop one of your teeth, it’s held down tight. There’s no way for anything to get underneath it. However, that bond between tooth and dental crown will start to deteriorate eventually.

When this happens, small holes and channels appear in the bond. That lets harmful bacteria slip under the dental crown. That’s why you can get cavities there. The big problem is that no one can tell there’s a cavity growing because the dental crown hides it.

Making Your Dental Crown Last

If you have a dental crown that’s nearing 10 years old, call Fox Family Dentistry for a new appointment. Until then, here are some tips for making sure your dental crown can last as long as possible.

• Visit our Burke, VA dental office every six months: Regular dental exams and cleanings can help keep your teeth (and your dental work) safe and strong.
• Brush twice per day and floss every night: The better you keep your teeth clean at home, the better your dental crown will last.
• Don’t use your teeth as tools: Using your teeth to hold things or open packages can put undue stress on your dental crown.
• Limit how much sugar and carbs you eat: If cavities are a problem, avoid the foods that increase your chances of tooth decay.

Call us TODAY at 703-978-5253 or use our convenient online form to schedule your next appointment.