
What can crowns do for you ?
- Strengthen and protect teeth that are very heavily filled
- Restore to original anatomy for aesthetics and speech
- Restore to function for teeth that are heavily worn down due to attrition and grinding.
- Protect root canal treated teeth which are brittle.
- Protect teeth that are crack – Crack tooth syndrome
- Veneers and crowns are often used to improve your smile in smile make-over cases
Types of crowns
This may be in the form of yellow gold or white gold crowns. They are indicated for molars where aesthetics is not important. The advantages of full metal crown is that less tooth preparations is required and its very strong and durable. In patients with heavy bite or short molars with minimal bite clearance for full porcelain crowns, full metal crowns is the best option.
This type of crowns has been very popular since the early 1970s. The metal framework gives its strength while the overlay porcelain gives it the appearance of a natural tooth. Porcelain bonded to metal crowns are durable ,however with the inner supporting metal framework ,these type of crowns tends to look more opaque.
The two most popular full porcelain crowns are Empress Crown or Zirconia crowns.
They are very translucent and prismatic as such they are very aesthetics. However they are only half as strong as zirconia crowns. Empress crowns are therefore not indicated in patients with heavy or deep bite.
They are the latest type of full porcelain crowns. They are strong and durable. The early zirconia crowns are not very translucent but recent advances in dental material sciences, present zirconia crowns are almost as translucent as Empress Crowns.

Treatment procedures for crown
- After the tooth is numbed with local anaesthetics, all old fillings are removed and any recurrent caries are carefully removed .
- Core build- up : this involves filling all the defects with glass ionomer cement or composites to strengthen the tooth.
- The tooth is than prepared evenly all round so that it is slightly smaller than the original tooth but with parallel walls so as to facilitate the final crown fabrication and fitting.
- An silicone impression is than taken so that a master cast of the tooth prepared can be made.
- A temporary crown is fabricated and temporary cemented with a soft cement.
- On the second visit , the temporary crown is removed and the final crown is fitted and permanently cemented in place.
Cost of crowns
Crowns in our practice are done by board certified specialist prosthodontist. The cost of crowns depends on the complexity of each case . The cost of crowns ranges from $1400 to $2000 per crown. The range is only a rough guide, we advise that you visit our clinic for a detail clinical and x-ray examination of your teeth in order to ascertain whether crowning is the best procedure for you.
FAQ
This problem is usually associated with porcelain fused to metal crowns. The metal backing of such crowns tends to show as a black line. With full porcelain crowns such as empress or zirconia crowns. The presence of black line crown margins is now a thing of the past.
With modern electronic injection devices such as the “Wand”, relatively painless administration of local anaesthetics can be done. Modern stronger anaesthetics like articaine also ensure that the whole crowning process is completely painless.