Dental Care Secrets

You are eating your dinner and you feel a sharp pain in your rear molar. While it is not unusual to feel slight pain in this area – you have felt such annoying pain for the last couple weeks – this time the sharpness of the pain is far more than what you had been previously familiar.

You continue with your dinner and this time you feel a severely sharp pain followed by a loud sound you never thought you’d hear: CRACK! It would seem that you had a terrible cavity that has now led to the tooth literally shattering. 90% of the tooth is now outright GONE. What can you do? Surely you can’t have the tooth replaced. Dentistry hasn’t reached THAT level. Well, it doesn’t have to because there is always the option available for having a dental crown fitted over the remaining parts of the tooth. This will then restore proper dental functioning with limited problems.

So What Are They?

If there is any aspect of a tooth remaining over the gum line, then a dental crown can be fitted. This is a common procedure but despite the commonality of it, there remains some confusion in regards to what dental crowns actually are. By definition, dental crowns are essentially a cosmetic procedure designed to restore a cracked or undersized tooth by placing a “crown” over the top of the remaining tooth.

What occurs during the procedure is essentially a new tooth is built using a cement like filling that is placed inside a shell and then fit over the remaining tooth. The end result is essentially the equivalent of a new tooth as it serves the same purposes and functions just as well.

Costs Associated with the Procedure

Dental crowns are not exactly cheap to have implanted. In fact, it is not out of the question for such a procedure to cost upwards of $500 per crown. Luckily, the procedure is covered by a number of dental plans and the co-pays can often be as low as $65 depending upon the plan. However, there are those who do not have a dental plan to pay for it. In such an instance, many dentists will provide a financing program or a payment plan to pay for such procedure for dental crowns. While not all dentists offer such a plan, many do and it is critical to find out in advance if such an option is available at the office you are considering.