Crowns and Bridges in Richmond – Same-Day robotised CEREC Restorations
Crowns and bridges at our Richmond clinic provide a fixed solution to damaged or missing teeth and can be used to restore your smile and bite to a much improved state. Dental crowns are used when the tooth structure is fractured or severely damaged, whereas dental bridges are used when one or more teeth are missing.
Dental crowns are manufactured teeth that are generally made from a type of porcelain and colour-matched to your existing teeth or can be made of a gold alloy for back teeth. They’re used to strengthen or reconstruct a tooth that is severely weakened, fractured or damaged. We also use dental crowns in Richmond for cosmetic purposes to conceal a badly stained, misshapen tooth and for cosmetic improvements.
How are dental crowns fabricated?
CEREC is a system that enables us to design and fabricate same-day crowns chairside. Once the affected tooth has been prepared, a 3-dimensional scan is taken of the teeth and bite using CEREC Primescan. This is currently the most advanced dental scanner and workflow in the world.
The images are then processed to make a 3D model of your mouth. Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software highlights the areas that need restoring. The accuracy of fit is close to ⅛ the width of a hair. The crown design is filtered through the high strength Tooth Helmet algorithm and once done, our on-site robot mill sculpts the designed crown from a block of high strength porcelain.
At TLC Richmond, we almost always enhance the strength further, to 4x the strength of a natural tooth by putting the crown through an additional crystallisation phase.
All that’s left to do is try on the crown for fit, cement it firmly into place, polish it and your smile has been restored in just one appointment!
Another similar type of CEREC restoration we use very often is a ‘crownlay’. This is an option that sits midway between a crown and an onlay, is less invasive, and allows our dentists to conserve and bond to healthy tooth enamel.
What are dental bridges?
Dental bridges are permanently fixed devices that our Richmond dentists use to replace adjacent missing teeth.
As the name suggests, they ‘bridge’ the gap left by missing teeth, closing it to restore your smile or your bite. A bridge consists of false teeth that are joined together and attached to adjacent teeth on either side of the gap. Known as ‘pontic’ teeth, these are modified to accommodate two dental crowns that support the bridge. In some cases, we use dental implants if the existing ‘pontic’ teeth are in poor health. Once dental bridges have been installed they function just like your natural teeth.
