How long can you expect to wait before your new dental crown is fitted to your tooth? This very much depends on the crown, and the most appropriate crown depends on your needs as a patient.
Preparation
Your tooth must first be prepared by removing a thin margin of its surface enamel. Your enamel has no ability to register sensations (no nerves), so the process is painless. The results are almost imperceptible, but help the crown to bond to the tooth, and make sure that the restored tooth (with the attached crown) has the same physical mass as before. The tooth can now be measured.
Specifications
The exact specifications are recorded in one of two ways. You can bite down into a dental mold, which will be made of polyvinyl siloxane. This creates a physical impression of your tooth. There's also the digital method, where your dentist runs a digital scanning wand (called an intraoral scanner) over your dental arch to create a computerized model of the tooth. The next stage involves waiting. But for how long?
Offsite
Some crowns are manufactured at a specialist dental laboratory. In contemporary restorative dentistry, offsite crown manufacturing is generally for restorations that can't be produced in the clinic itself. This includes crowns for a patient with a bite pattern that indicates a reinforced crown will be mandatory—such as porcelain fused to a metal crown (ceramic coating over a metal frame). All-metal crowns can also require a dental laboratory. Even some zirconia crowns (zirconia is a type of ceramic) can require a specialist ceramicist if there are any irregularities with the tooth they're to be fitted to.
Waiting
As for how long a dental laboratory will take to manufacture the crown, there's no definitive way to estimate this. It depends on the materials required, the amount of work the laboratory is currently processing, and any public holidays—it's difficult to be specific. It could be a matter of days or even weeks. Your tooth will be fitted with a temporary acrylic crown in the interim. This alleviates any tooth sensitivity and offers some cosmetic benefits. But if you only require a standard zirconia crown, you won't need to wait for very long.
Onsite
Same-day dental crowns are manufactured at the dental clinic. This means chair-side economical restoration of esthetic ceramic and is essentially a standard crown milled onsite while you wait. It utilizes computer-aided design and manufacturing with completely accurate results. The crown can then be fitted immediately, with preparation and crown fitting taking place in the same appointment.
A same-day crown may not be possible for patients with complex crown needs, but in a standard case, why wait weeks when you don't need to wait at all?
Reach out to a dentist that offers a variety of crown options, including CEREC same-day dental crowns.
Share13 July 2023
Halloween is a holiday that my children love, and telling them they can't go door-to-door collecting candy would break their hearts. This led me to allowing them to collect candy on the holiday, then rationing it out to them every day instead of letting them gobble it up in just a few days. I always thought this was better for them, but my dentist told me this could be the reason why their February dental check-ups were always their worst ones. Daily candy consumption was taking a toll on their teeth. I started a new tradition of letting them indulge for two days, then giving them the option to swap the rest with me in exchange for a new toy. They never pass on the opportunity for a new toy. I created this blog to encourage other parents find similar tactics to keep their children's teeth healthy after Halloween.