Dental Crowns Cairns

Effectively restore and protect your mouth’s function and appearance

Crowns, commonly referred to as “caps”, are dental restorations that cover over and entirely encase the visible portion of a tooth. In comparison, fillings only fill in or cover a small portion of a tooth. Crowns last for decades and look beautiful.

Firstly, we provide same-day crowns (constructed using E4D CADCAM technology) in the majority of cases made from video scans usually taken directly in the mouth in place of impressions.

The material choice is Emax Porcelain, the most robust of all the All-Ceramic Porcelain Crown materials. This material is highly aesthetic and long lasting and has the lowest tendency to chip of all the current generation of non-metal crowns. Being made up on either the same day or by next morning is a big advantage and clients find this far more convenient than messing around with provisional crowns that usually need the patient to be numbed up to remove and insert the new final crown.

ALL-CERAMIC CROWNS: Emax E4D, Lava Ultimate E4D, Empress E4D, Lava, Procera or Zirconia E4D crowns containing no metal at all are the most aesthetic and beautifully life-like restoration. We generally use all-ceramic crowns in aesthetically critical areas, for front teeth and premolars, but will place an EMAX in almost all molar teeth requiring crowns also.

PORCELAIN-FUSED-TO-GOLD CROWNS: For people who grind and clench their teeth very heavily and where they still expect a tooth- coloured crown on molars, we have in the past recommended a porcelain-fused-to-gold crown. The gold core provides strength against the heavy biting forces that a molar must withstand, whilst the porcelain exterior affords excellent aesthetics. The newer All-Ceramic Emax Material is now taking over this role as it has been demonstrated that it is less likely that a porcelain chip or fracture will occur using Emax that Porcelain Fused to Gold.

FULL GOLD CROWNS: A full gold crown is the strongest crown of all. In severe clenchers and grinders, and in out-of-sight positions, a full gold crown is often the longest lasting choice. If longevity and lowest maintenance are more important to you than best most natural appearance, a Gold Crown is still the best that can be offered.

Do we get Full Gold Crowns?

Very rarely at Future Dental because Emax is so strong and aesthetically appealing. About the only time the use of FGCs at Future Dental occurs now is in cases where a Porcelain Fused to Metal Crown, as part of an old expensive Bridge, has had its porcelain break away and we don’t want to put that person through the expense and inconvenience of having to replace the entire bridge.

The porcelain is removed from that part of the bridge and a new Gold Crown over the old gold below is bonded in place. Rarely the very back tooth may require a FGC in the most severe grinders and clenchers.

A sacrifice in appearance that can only be done in bridges on back teeth but much cheaper than replacing the entire expensive bridge. We never offer Porcelain Fused to Metal Bridges anymore, so we don’t have to worry about that future mode of failure. Emax bridges don’t seem to suffer porcelain chipping to any significant degree like Porcelain Fused to Metal or Porcelain Fused to Zirconia or Alumina. And no, we won’t be offered those types of Crowns or Bridges either for those very reasons apart from the poorer aesthetic outcomes that these other materials produce.

So now you realise you are almost certainly going to have an Emax Crown done at Future Dental.

There are several reasons why a tooth needs a crown:

1. To strengthen a tooth. A tooth that has lost 50% or more of its coronal tooth structure is very weak, even when filled with the best fillings materials available. We usually recommend that a heavily filled or decayed tooth be crowned before it collapses.
2. To restore a tooth to its original shape. A tooth that is broken or that is very worn down from years of grinding is often flattened and ineffectual at chewing. A crown would be the ideal method of restoring a tooth’s anatomy to provide an efficient chewing surface and very aesthetic result.
3. To improve the cosmetic appearance of a tooth. A crown encases the entire visibility of a tooth and can, therefore, be used to idealise the cosmetic appearance of a tooth. Crowns can correct cosmetic problems such as discolouration, crowding and poor alignment, and aberrations in size and shape of a tooth.
4. To stop the progression of Cracks and Cracked Tooth Syndrome (CTS). A cracked tooth initially presents with a sudden sharp pain when biting down, which immediately subsides once you release the biting pressure. Often hot, cold or sweet foods and drinks will cause sudden sharp pain in cracked teeth. A tooth that is greatly weakened by a crack will often die if untreated. A crack in a tooth is like a crack in a windscreen. They only get worse and if left long enough will allow bacteria into the nerve causing an abscess and the need for either an extraction or a root canal treatment.
5. To restore a tooth that has gone through root canal therapy. Not only are they more prone to breakage but those breakages are usually un-restorable and the entire tooth will then need surgical removal. This is a great shame after you went through the inconvenience and high cost of a root canal treatment.

BIODOME CROWNS

Biodome Crown is the most tooth-conserving design for a crown, and its other great advantage is that all the biting forces applied to a Biodome Crown, are Compressive forces, the type that Emax porcelain endures best. It is based on the old architecture of the Dome, like in St Peter’s Cathedral and St Paul’s Cathedral. This robust design involves reducing less tooth structure off the sides of the tooth, which also best preserves as much natural tooth structure as possible.

It is not suitable for front teeth but is done on back teeth as often as possible.

Loss of a tooth vitality from over-preparation is virtually never seen with this design type, and Dr Gibbins is an expert and has published on this technique.