I have a several porcelain crowns that I received years ago for a smile makeover. One of them always had a slight defect, which my dentist pointed out to me, called a craze line. It has never been a problem until this week. Now I can feel it and see it. It looks like a tiny crack. Is this a dental emergency? Is the crown going to come off?
Mark
Dear Mark,
While I would not call it a dental emergency where you have to get seen today, I would call your dentist and get scheduled to have this dealt with soon. At some point, it will result in your dental crown breaking. Craze lines are fairly common and normally are not a problem. Something in yours changed.
You mentioned that you had these crowns placed years ago, but didn’t say how long. It could be that they’ve been in so long that they are coming to their natural end and will all need to be replaced. If so, you have a couple of choices.
First, you can just replace them as they fail, which is less money up front but more time consuming. Second, you can decide to replace them all at once. This is a chunk of money up front, but you won’t have to worry about when the next one will fail and you’ll be done with the whole thing.
I’m not sure why your dentist gave you dental crowns for your smile makeover instead of porcelain veneers. You didn’t mention anything being wrong with the teeth that required crowns specifically. For the benefit of those reading this post, the standard procedure for a smile makeover is to get porcelain veneers instead of crowns. This is because dental crowns require the tooth to be ground down, whereas veneers will protect much more of the natural tooth structure.
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