Did you know that there are five different types of dental crowns that you can get
for a back tooth? In this video I’m going to show and talk about the five different types
and give you the pros and cons of each. I’ll also tell you which type of crowns I use most often in my office.
Hi dental fans, I’m Dr. Rich, teaching you about dentistry and teeth so that you can have a very
nice smile. Please hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss my weekly dental videos.
So the five different types of crowns for back teeth that I’ve used are full gold crowns,
full contour zirconia crowns, porcelain fused to metal crowns, porcelain fused to zirconia crowns,
and emax, also called lithium disilicate crowns. The main type of crown I use for back teeth
nowadays is called a full contour zirconia crown. It is an all porcelain crown so it
looks like a tooth, and it is very strong. I’d say I use this type of crown probably about
eighty five to ninety percent of the time. If the tooth is not visible when you speak or smile,
I’ll use the strongest type of zirconia available. The downside is that it’s a bit opaque looking.
But there is a translucent zirconia available, which looks better but it is not as strong
as the original formula zirconia. I will use the translucent zirconia if I’m fixing a tooth
closer to the front of the mouth, and if the patient doesn’t mind how it looks.
If I need to make a really esthetic crown for a back tooth, I’ll use Emax. It’s a type of
porcelain called lithium disilicate and it looks very natural. It looks so good that it’s used for
front teeth a lot as well. The downsides to Emax is that it’s not as strong as zirconia,
and in order to make it as strong as possible, it has to be bonded in instead
of just cemented in like zirconia. Bonding is a more complicated process and takes a bit longer.
Full gold crowns are just what they sound like, it’s a crown that is made completely out of gold
alloy. It’s usually about 50% gold, so about 12 karat gold. The more gold in the alloy,
the softer the alloy becomes. A full gold crown is typically the strongest crown you can have made
with arguably the best fit. A full gold crown is strong because it is made out
of metal. It won’t crack. It can be made to fit a tooth very well because it is cast.
First a wax pattern is made, then that is used to make the cast crown. The down side to a gold
crown, is that it’s gold. Not everybody likes how they look. I still place them occasionally on
first and second molars in patients who want a strong crown and don’t care about the color.
The last two types of crowns I don’t use much at all anymore. Those two are porcelain fused to
metal and porcelain fused to zirconia crowns. Porcelain fused to metal crowns used to be the
main type of crown that was used on back teeth if you wanted the crown to look like a tooth. It
consists of a thin layer of white gold, which is then covered with porcelain to look like a tooth.
The white gold layer is very strong, but the weak part of the crown was the porcelain.
The type of porcelain that was used was called “feldspathic” porcelain. It looks very natural
but is not very strong. It’s common to see people with chipped porcelain fused to metal crowns.
The underlying metal layer still seals the tooth, but some of the porcelain has chipped off.
Porcelain fused to zirconia crowns are similar to porcelain fused to metal crowns
but the crown has a thin layer of zirconia which is then covered with porcelain. If the porcelain
chips off of a porcelain fused to zirconia crown, the underlying zirconia still looks tooth colored.
In my office, full contour zirconia and emax
have replaced porcelain fused to metal crowns, but I will use porcelain fused to metal
if I need to replace an existing 3 tooth bridge with a new bridge. Full contour zirconia bridges
are available, but the material needs to be pretty thick to have enough strength.
This can make the bridge look kind of bulky compared to a porcelain fused to metal crown.
So I hope you learned something about dental crowns for back teeth. I post new videos weekly
so please hit the subscribe button. And if you have any questions or comments, please leave them
down below in the comment section. Thank you very much for watching and I’ll see you in the next video.