How Long Does It Take to Recover after Getting a Dental Crown?

Dental crowns are tooth-shaped caps fitted over a damaged tooth. Dental crowns help protect, cover, and restore the shape of your teeth when fillings are insufficient to resolve problems. Metals, porcelain, resin, and ceramic help make dental crowns that typically don’t require special care over time besides excellent dental hygiene consistently.

Explaining Dental Crowns

Your teeth sustain damages over time from tooth decay, injuries, or just plain overuse. The damages cause your teeth to lose shape and size, and the tooth-shaped caps are placed over them by dental crowns in Plano, TX, to restore the tooth’s size, strength, shape, and appearance. Dental crowns are cemented over the damaged tooth to ensure it encases the visible portion of the tooth.

The dental crown procedure may appear daunting but recovering from getting the restoration requires about a couple of weeks and not more so long as you follow your dentist’s instructions and care for the repair appropriately.

Does Everyone Need Dental Crowns?

People may need dental crowns for various reasons, including:

• They might need to protect a weakened tooth from decay from breaking or keep the tooth together if parts of it are already cracked.
• People may want to restore a broken tooth or one severely worn down.
• People may consider covering and supporting a tooth with large fillings without sufficient tooth structure remaining.
• People with missing teeth may need dental crowns to hold a dental bridge in place or cover dental implants.

Dental crowns also help hide severely misshapen or discolored teeth and protect a tooth that has undergone endodontic therapy.

What to Expect after Getting a Crown?

Dental crowns help protect your teeth from damage to your mouth. However, after going through the dental crown procedure, there are some issues you might experience over time. They are:

Discomfort and Sensitivity

A newly-crowned tooth is susceptible to sensitivity immediately after placement when the anesthesia you received begins wearing off. You might experience sensitivity to temperatures if the crowned tooth has a nerve in it. In such cases, the dental office in Plano recommends you brush your teeth with a toothpaste designed for sensitive teeth. If you experience pain and sensitivity when biting down, it indicates the crown placement is too high on the tooth. You can have the problem comfortably fixed by calling your dentist for adjustments.

Besides the above, you might experience a chipped Crown if you have an all-porcelain crown over your tooth. Minor chips are repairable with the crown remaining in your mouth. However, if the chunks are large or several, you might need a replacement.

Sometimes the dental cement holding the crown can wash out from beneath to loosen the restoration. Not only does the loosening cause the crown to become loose, but it allows bacteria to leak and cause decay to the underlying tooth. If you have a loose crown, contact your dentist’s office to have it fixed as soon as possible.

Dental crowns can sometimes fall off due to improper fitting or the lack of cement. If you confront this issue, contact your dentist’s office immediately for specific instructions on caring for your tooth and crown until you can schedule an appointment. Dentists can recement the crown if possible but if they can’t creation of a new crown becomes essential.

You might sometimes develop allergic reactions to porcelain fused to metal crowns in rare conditions. Several metals are combined to make dental crowns and might cause allergic reactions in rare cases.

Porcelain fused to metal crowns can cause you to see a dark line next to your gum line. However, this is a regular occurrence, and the dark line is merely the metal of the crown displaying itself.

How Long Do Dental Crowns Last?

Generally, dental crowns last between five to 15 years. The lifespan of a dental crown depends on the wear and tear it is exposed to. Your oral hygiene practices and mouth-related habits also contribute to the crown’s lifespan. The mouth-related patterns might include:

• Grinding or clenching your teeth.
• Chewing on ice and fingernails or using your teeth for purposes other than chewing or biting.

Dental crowns don’t require special care, so long as remember the underlying tooth still needs protection from decay and gum disease. Therefore you must continue following good oral hygiene practices, including brushing your teeth twice a day for two minutes each, flossing at least once, especially around the crown area where your gums meet your tooth, and avoiding biting on complex surfaces with porcelain crowns to prevent cracking. Besides all the above, getting six-monthly dental exams and cleanings is essential.

If you have damaged or broken teeth that need restorations, please do not hesitate to contact Lutke Dental providing dental crowns to restore your teeth.