I need to get a dental crown on a front tooth, but my dentist doesn’t want to provide it. He insists I won’t like it. Yet, he offers CEREC crowns. It doesn’t make sense to me. Why does he have the machine? Should I go to a different dentist to have it done?

Alan

Dear Alan,

My guess is your dentist uses the CEREC crowns on teeth other than the front two teeth. There is a reason for this. When a CEREC crown is made, it is milled out of a single block of porcelain. This does fine on other teeth. However, if you look closely at the teeth above you’ll notice the teeth aren’t uniform from top to bottom. There are differences in opacity. When you get a traditional porcelain crown, which your dentist is suggesting, it is formed from several different blocks of porcelain in order to mimic those differences.

So, you have a few choices. You can go to a dentist who cares less about how the results will turn out and more about bringing in the fee from a patient in order to get the same-day crowns. Or you can listen to your dentist and allow him to do the traditional crowns.

It is your teeth and your smile. So, if having the best result isn’t as important to you as the convenience of one appointment, which is totally fine, then I would switch to another dentist to get the crown you want. You could also tell your dentist you understand it won’t look as good, but you still want CEREC and would prefer he get the fee than another dentist. Then, he may go ahead with it.

This blog is brought to you by Gilbert Dentist Dr. Matt Roper.