I had a CEREC crown done on a tooth. This isn’t my first crown, but it is my first CEREC crown. For some reason, this one hurts when I bite down. Is that something peculiar to this type of crown? I’ve never had that happen before?

Jeff

Dear Jeff,

I truly do not believe the pain you are experiencing is because it is a CEREC crown. Most of the time, CEREC crowns fit better because they are precisely milled by a computer. So, what COULD be causing your pain?

The first reason could be that the bite is too high. If it isn’t seated in the correct place, then when you bite down all your biting force is going to that one spot instead of being spread across all your teeth. This can cause some substantial pain. If this is the case, your dentist can adjust the crown and you should have no further problems.

You didn’t mention if you’d already been back to your dentist and this has been done. If the crown has been adjusted and you are still experiencing pain, the next step would be to check for a lingering infection. If you had this crown placed after a root canal treatment, there can be a canal that was missed. Though our teeth only have a limited number of canals, many times they have branches that shoot off into other parts of the tooth. A dentist can do everything right and still not be able to get everything the first go-round. In that case, a re-treatment can be tried. If you do need a re-treatment, I generally recommend you see a root canal specialist to increase your chances of success the second time around.

Even if you didn’t have a root canal treatment, there could still have been an infection there. Sometimes, the infections are small and hard to read, but get easier as the infection grows. A simple diagnostic x-ray should help determine if this is the cause of your pain.

I would start with these two avenues of inquiry as they are the most common.

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