A badly broken or decayed tooth often cannot be held together by a filling alone. A crown encases what is left and takes the chewing load off it, which is what stops the tooth splitting further.
It is one of the more common things we do. The decision worth taking time over is the material, because strength, appearance and cost pull in different directions depending on which tooth it is going on.
When a tooth needs a crown rather than a filling
A filling sits inside a tooth and relies on the walls around it to hold everything together. A crown sits over the tooth and takes the load itself. So the question is never really “filling or crown” in the abstract — it is whether enough sound tooth remains to carry the force of chewing, which on a back molar is considerable and repeated some thousands of times a day.
- A tooth that has lost a cusp, or where the remaining walls are thin enough to flex.
- A tooth that has been root canal treated. Removing the nerve leaves the tooth more brittle, and back teeth in particular split without full coverage.
- A cracked tooth. A crown holds the segments together in a way nothing placed inside the tooth can.
- A tooth carrying a large old filling that has been replaced once or twice already — each replacement takes a little more tooth with it.
- Heavy wear from grinding, where teeth have shortened enough to affect the bite.
- A front tooth that is discoloured and heavily filled, where a veneer would improve the look without adding any strength.
Dental crowns in Perth are one of the more common treatments we provide at Hocking Dental Care, and we will go through the material options and what each one costs before you decide. Where a filling, an onlay or nothing at all would genuinely do, we will say so — a crown removes a good deal of tooth, and that is not a small thing to do to a tooth that did not need it.