Posted by writeradmin
I don’t know what has gone wrong with my CEREC crown. My dentist matched the color okay but somehow they still don’t match. It is so obvious the CEREC crown is fake next to the other one. Can you figure out what went wrong?
Basil
Dear Basil,
I think I can tell you the problem here. If you look at your teeth (not the one that is crowned), you will notice that they are not the same color all the way down. There are varying opacities from the top to the bottom of your teeth. When a traditional crown is made, the ceramist will use different blocks of porcelain in order to mimic the right translucency and opaqueness throughout the tooth.
CEREC crowns, however, are milled from a single block of porcelain, which means there will be no variety in the porcelain and the tooth will end up looking flat. This works fine on side or back teeth, but a front tooth is much more exposed. The light that hits it when you smile reveals all the differences in the tooth. Most dentists steer patients away from the same day crowns when it comes to front teeth and encourage them to get the traditional crowns in this case.
I wish your dentist had the sense to do that for you. The best you can do at this point is to point out to your dentist how fake it looks and ask him to replace it with a traditional crown so that you have a better chance of a natural looking tooth. One other suggestion, though. In most cases, it is extremely difficult to match a single front tooth. Because of that, you need to insist he first places it with a temporary try-in paste so you can get a good look at it and make sure it matches perfectly. If not, he needs to send it back to the lab. Do not allow him to permanently bond the crown on until you are satisfied with it.
This blog is brought to you by Lafayette, LA Dentist Dr. John Theriot.