Why the Strongest Dental Crown Isn’t Always the Best?

A smile can dramatically improve your looks, but, rotten, chipped, or missing teeth can have the opposite effect and stop you from flashing a stunning smile. Fortunately, today, when a filling or veneer is insufficient, a dental crown may come to your rescue and be a great solution to your smile.

Top 3 Options

Let’s take a quick look at the top 3 options!

1. Metal—As per some experts, there’s no better option than a metal replacement for the innermost top and bottom molars. As molars come into action for the most rigorous chewing, there’s a need for something that won’t break, no matter what. The disadvantage to metal dental crowns, however, is that they look somewhat different from natural teeth.

2. Porcelain Ceramic—In terms of natural looks, nothing can beat porcelain. However, they’re rather delicate, vis-à-vis other kinds of materials, and so they may chip more frequently. Since they’re highly fragile, these aren’t the choice of a large number of dentists who avoid using them on molar or premolar teeth of their patients, where they’ll be under comparatively more bite pressure from regular chewing.

3. Composite—It looks naturally off-white. Although they won’t break off as much as porcelain crowns, they aren’t sturdy enough against normal chewing. In addition, brushing your teeth aggressively can destroy the incredibly polished shell of the composite crowns, which makes them lose that natural look pretty fast. Having said that, composite offers an amazing choice for that lower front row, in some circumstances, where they don’t make much contact with the inside of your upper front teeth. As said earlier, clear discoloration from brushing may be an issue, but it won’t be in the front and the center when you flash your award-winning smile. Sounds great, right?

Now the key question… Why the Strongest Restorations Aren’t Always the Best?

Moving on to the important question, there could be many reasons, such as:

1. Strong Materials May Not Be As Beautiful –

Stronger materials have their own set of disadvantages. From the perspective of looks, they may not look as appealing as some of the materials discussed before. At present, zirconia is the strongest material being used by dentists for dental restorations. Although Zirconia is a white ceramic and somewhat passable when it comes to restorations, it’s opaque—and not translucent like your natural tooth enamel.

2. Strong Materials May Harm Natural Teeth –

One more issue is that these stronger materials may be many times stronger, compared to your natural tooth enamel (possibly even 30 times stronger, in comparison with natural tooth enamel). If you have an incredibly strong restoration banging up against a natural tooth in a way that results in a destructive force, though the artificial tooth may make it through just fine, the natural tooth may vanish.  So, it’s vital to balance the options, and not opt exclusively for durable restorations to deal with the stress.

3. Inappropriately Placed Strong Crowns May Lead To TMJ –

It’s not just the opposing tooth that’s in danger from an inappropriately placed artificial tooth, such as a dental crown. If an artificial tooth is put in a manner that creates an imbalanced bite, it may cause harm outside of your mouth. If a dental crown stops your jaw from getting a stress-free rest place, your jaw muscles may be subjected to high pressure. As your muscles strain to find a relaxing situation, they can put unwanted pressure on your jaw joints, causing them to displace or experience destructive wear. The muscle strain, jaw dislocation, and destructive wear may cause jaw dysfunction and jaw pain in addition to headaches, back pain, neck pain—all symptoms of TMJ.

Some Implant Options that Merge Strength & Beauty

Fortunately, we have some very good choices that bring together both strength and beauty, such as:

1. Lithium Disilicate –

It’s a chemical compound that’s a glass ceramic—and thanks to its strength, translucency, and machinability—it’s extensively used as a dental ceramic. It’s usually strong enough (sometimes even 10 times stronger than your natural tooth enamel!), and can be incredibly beautiful as well. In addition, it may be difficult to tell them apart from your natural teeth.

2. Porcelain-fused-to-metal –

These crowns integrate porcelain and metal amalgam, and they are both rather tough and appealing. They’re the strongest variety, with decent flexibility, and they look more natural in comparison with metal crowns. They won’t break off as easily as either porcelain or ceramic crowns. In some particular situations, Porcelain-fused-to-metal goes nicely with canine teeth and teeth preceding molars. Importantly, the contact points aren’t under as much pressure as the molars are.