Crowns Q&A

Here are some commonly asked questions about crowns What materials are crowns made of? There are plenty of crowns. Stainless steel, gold, porcelain fused to metal or porcelain zirconia, all of these we will discuss in another segment.

What is the life of a crown? Generally a crown will last anywhere from 5-15 years and sometimes more depending on how you take care of your teeth, your habits and things like that.

Warranty and Insurance? Warranty for a lab crown is usually for a year or so. The ones that we make in house depending on the situation we do help you out. One year for sure it will be covered, if it goes a second year or beyond we will help you out there. For insurances, every insurance is different; it can be covered from 50%-100%

What if my crown falls off and I can’t make it to a dentist? Just like with a temporary crown, try to get some over the counter temporary cement from the drug store/ grocery store. You place a little bit on your crown and pop it back in, making sure it’s not backwards. If you can’t get to the store you can use toothpaste and make sure to see your dentist as soon as you can. In some rare cases we’ll have a patient say that they’ve just got their crown done and it keeps coming off. There are some situations where your crown can come off, when your tooth structure is really short to begin with. In those situations your dentist might say they are just going to re-do it. They may make some alterations to the grooves to try and make it stick. There are always situations that need to be dealt with.

Sometimes – rarely, you will have a crown done and it just doesn’t feel quite right. In that case we’ll make a few small adjustments to take care of that. Again in rare cases we may re-do the crown for you.

Shade is another one. Once the crown is seated, and a patient comes back and says they don’t like the color of the crown. Before you get the crown cemented make sure you’re happy with the shade, have a look in the mirror. If it looks great we’ll seat it, and if not that is the best time they can change it.

There you have it, our most commonly asked questions. If you have any questions that weren’t addressed here, please give our office a call!