Dental Cap (Crown) & Dental Bridge: Types, Cost & Benefits

If your dentist has advised you to get a Dental Cap after a Root canal treatment or because your tooth is badly damaged, you may have many questions.

• What is a Dental Cap?
• Is Dental Crown different from Dental Bridge?
• Which cap is best?
• Should you choose Zirconia, PFM or E-max?

In this complete guide, we’ll answer all these questions in simple language.

Dental Bridge/ Dental Cap/ Dental Crown

“We all want to see our teeth shining and strong but sometimes our but sometimes one of our teeth gets damaged and doctor suggests us to us to put on a dental cap.”

Today we’ll be talking about what are dental cap/crown/bridge and of how many types:-

Need of tooth cap/crown:-

We need this when one of our tooth goes bad or our teeth fall out and it can’t be saved even by filling it even when u take good care of it, so here it gets so damaged that there is no other way to save it but to apply tooth cap. A cap or crown gives strength to your teeth and helps to keep your teeth in shape and in good appearance also maintains the colour of it.

Use of dental bridge:-

Dental bridge is used when someone tooth is missing a bridge is made up by combining two or more dental caps together. For eg:- there’s an artificial tooth and on its both side there is a dental cap attached to it. Here the artificial tooth is one we want to replace. Any cap or bridge is made to suit your teeth. The function of the Dental Cap and bridge is to avoid the weakening of the tooth. I.e. to protect it.

Many times use of dental cap and bridge knowledge is given after telling you about the RCT (ROOT CANAL TREATMENT). The tooth gets damaged after the RCT, that is, it becomes bad. The dental cap is put after the implant. Or if someone’s tooth is broken, it has become bad or has become black or even if it is not beautiful, then cap advice is done.

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Type of dental cap:-

A dental cap is made up of many kinds of material. And here we’ll discuss of most common dental caps.

• metal cap:- The metal cap may look like silver and is made of steel, although it is quite strong, it has a drawback that whenever the patient will laugh or speak the colour of it will be visible and it looks different and because it looks different it doesn’t look good also one more drawback can be that, some patients are allergic to this metal material and that’s why usage of metal crown is reduced. These days this type of cap is only used on selective patients.
• PFM crown:- Porcelain-fused-to-metal in which from inside its made up of metal And on top there is a layer of tooth color Therefore, it may be seen that the color of the tooth is strong and strong because there is a layer of metal from inside. These type of caps are quite famous and really common and is used from a long period of time and is helping the patients a lot to solve there tooth problem. And now because these caps are made up of two layers that’s why a doctor rubs off about 1.5 to 2 mm tooth from all the sides because of which the tooth gets weak and what we don’t want. There is another drawback of this cap that is the gum size becomes small and the metal of this cap becomes visible and if this is implanted in the front teeth it becomes visible and destroy the look. This is because of it when you smile or talk the metal becomes visible.
• Metal free caps :- Metal free cap covers well the drawbacks of this pfm cap. Metal free cap is only made up of porcelain. And these metal free caps are of two types :

1. Zirconia- this is white metal and is very strong and now a days these are made up of colour of teeth, comfortable and are very durable and is these zirconia caps are there in your teeth then even a doctor cannot identify at first sight that which one is ur natural tooth or an artificial tooth. But here also zirconia has one drawback like PFM I.e. it does not sticks to your teeth and doctors rub off a lot your teeth to fit the zirconia cap.
2. E-max crown – metal free e-max crown fulfills the need of the zirconia cap but e- max is very fragile and it sticks to your tooth and becomes one part of it. And once it is properly done it works for a longer period of time. E-max is implanted where the doctors can’t rub off the teeth much or disgening the smile or else full mouth rehabilitation cases. This is where e-max caps are used or provided.

Caps or bridges are usually made up of these materials and all these caps can also be made by computerise  I.e. CAD cam tooth, here because CAD cams are computerised the chances of human error is less. CAD cam design is very different from hand made caps and is better. These caps are little costly and the properties of other caps are same which have Been discussed .