When most of us think of crowns, we think of royalty. This can be an actual monarch, like Queen Elizabeth, or it can be an informal tradition, like prom kings and queens that many high schools select across the United States. Either way, the crown is a symbol that a person is special in some way. We feel the same way about the people to whom we give crowns at Sunrise Dental. We will admit that our dental crowns may not look as fancy as the gold ones that people wear on their heads. But from a practical standpoint, dental crowns are much more useful. To show you what we mean, we have a list of five reasons a dental crown could help you or someone you know, especially if you live near one of our four dentist offices in the Triangle. What Dental Crowns Can Do For You If something does happen to one of your teeth, it can change the appearance of your smile. It may be painful in some circumstance, and it could make you self-conscious about your smile. We don’t want any of those things for you or any of our patients. A dental crown will restore your smile in addition to providing the full function of a real tooth. Here are some of the ways we have used our crowns to benefit our patients. ▸ 1. Repairing a chipped tooth. Chipped and broken teeth don’t happen spontaneously. In most cases, they occur as a result of an accident of some kind. Rushing headlong in an attempt to track down a flyball in a softball game can cause a collision that can damage one or more teeth. Chewing on hard pieces of candy (they call them jawbreakers for a reason) can cause parts of a tooth to break off. Just a moment of inattention can cause you to walk into something (a wall, a pole) or to fall in a way that damages a tooth. If any of these things happen to you, we encourage you to make an appointment at one of our offices as soon as you can. Using our iTero scanner, we can make a digital impression of your mouth, which will aid the laboratory in designing a dental crown that will match perfectly with the rest of your smile. We will need to reshape your tooth to form an abutment to support your crown. We may place a temporary crown over the tooth to protect while we wait for your permanent crown to be completed. You will return to our office in a few weeks when your dental crown is ready, and we will bond it in place. When the crown it placed, it will be indistinguishable from a real tooth. ▸ 2. Repairing a decayed tooth. Cavities affect more than 90 percent of Americans during their lives. In many cases, they can be handled with a filling. Large cavities require something more, however. This is a time with dental crowns come in handy. In this case, we will want to remove the decayed areas of the tooth. In the process, we also will form the abutment like we mentioned above. From there, getting your crown is practically the same as above. ▸ 3. Replacing old fillings. You may have received a filling decades ago. Each time you have it replaced, the dentist may have to remove a little more of your tooth to create a good bond between the tooth and the filling material. Depending on how often a filling has been replaced, you may be better off getting a dental crown instead of another filling the next time it needs to be replaced. ▸  4. Sealing a tooth after a root canal treatment. A root canal procedure involves removing an infection from the inside of your tooth. To do that, your dentist has to create an opening in your tooth. A dental crown can be an effective way to seal and protect the tooth after the procedure. ▸  5. Replacing a lost tooth. This procedure is slightly different from what we described above. In this case, you won’t have a tooth to reshape. Instead, we can place a dental implant in your jaw. Modern implants have abutments on the end, which is where we can place the dental crown to completely replace your missing tooth. Care For A Crown? We have dentist offices in Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh. If you or someone in your family should need a dental crown, we may be just a short drive away. To learn more about dental crowns or to make an appointment, all you need to do is contact us online or call the Sunrise Dental location close to you. In our next post, we will be discussing a service that builds on what we do with crowns, dental bridges.