I have a set of dental crowns. One of them had a slight defect from the beginning. My dentist told me about it even though you couldn’t see it. I respected that. She said it is a craze line and that it is fairly common and they are usually nothing to worry about. She did give me the option of switching it out. However, I trusted her (and still do). It’s been just over 15 years and the crowns have been fine until this week. The one with the defect has changed and it has a slight horizontal crack. Is this something that you would consider a dental emergency or can it wait until I have some more time?
Evie
Dear Evie,
I am glad to hear you have such a great dentist. She was right. Both natural teeth and porcelain have some craze lines. They rarely are a concern. However, yours seems to have changed. Fifteen years is a good run. I would not necessarily say that this is a dental emergency. I would say that it will eventually crack. You’ll need to get it replaced sometime soon.
You mentioned that you have multiple crowns. It sounds like you had them all placed around the same time as the one with the craze lines. This gives you a couple of choices. First, you can just replace the one with the defect and wait until the others start to fail and then change them out as needed.
A second option is to replace all of your porcelain crowns at the same time. This has the benefit of saving you time with multiple appointments. Though, there is the downside of having to pay for all the crowns at once. If you can budget that, it will be worth the time savings and peace of mind. Though, there is nothing wrong with doing it one at a time as necessary.
If you are going to do just one of them, be aware that it will require serious cosmetic skills. Matching a single crown is much more of an advanced cosmetic procedure than replacing all the crowns at once. You will want to insist that they do a temporary try in so you can make sure the crowns matches just the way you want it too before it is bondied permanently on.
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