Can a Crown Get a Cavity?
Cavities generally occur on the crown of your teeth. Occasionally they can also make their presence felt between your teeth if you don’t maintain appropriate dental hygiene. If you have a severely decayed or damaged tooth unfit for restoration with standard fillings, dentists suggest you have the tooth encased with a dental crown to restore it. Dental crowns are durable and expected to remain on your tooth for a decade or more. You might express happiness at receiving a natural-looking dental crown over your damaged tooth when the dental clinic in Southampton, PA, mention dental crowns never attract tooth decay or cavities.
Before you go overboard with your happiness, it helps to realize that while your mouth bacteria will not try to penetrate the dental crown, they continue to attack the tooth beneath it. As a result, the tooth encased by the dental crown remains vulnerable to cavities similar to holes in any part of your mouth, making fixing the cavity an essential requirement soon after it is detected or causing the usual discomfort familiar with cavities.
What Are Crowns and Why Do You Have Them?
Dental crowns are tooth caps dentists place over a damaged or decayed tooth using durable materials like gold, stainless steel, porcelain, or composite resin. Dental crowns vary in price and durability. In addition, dental restorations from porcelain and resin match the natural color of the tooth to help ensure the crown doesn’t impact your aesthetics.
Dental crowns become necessary for many dental health conditions, cosmetic reasons, et cetera. For example, if you have a large cavity that is challenging to repair with dental fillings, your dentist will likely suggest a dental crown to cover the tooth, especially if the tooth has received multiple dental fillings earlier.
Dental crowns in Southampton, PA, also help restore root canal-treated teeth to protect them from further damage and to seal the tooth, preventing bacteria from entering it. In addition, if you have a severely discolored tooth, you can consider concealing the tooth under a dental crown for aesthetic reasons. Crowns are also beneficial to function as artificial teeth with dental bridges attached to the adjacent teeth and on dental implants.
Except for crowns placed atop dental implants, all other cases have part of your natural tooth beneath the crown, which it protects. Although the crown helps prevent bacteria from getting into the tooth, the natural tooth enamel remains vulnerable to causing cavities.
How Do Cavities Develop on Crowns?
As mentioned earlier, a Crown is an artificial cap made of various materials to encase your decayed or damaged tooth protection from additional problems. Unfortunately, the underlying tooth remains vulnerable to your mouth bacteria and can attract cavities and tooth decay even beneath the crown. For your reference, some examples of why you might develop cavities on crowns are mentioned below.
Marginal Decay: If the fitting of the crown allows a tiny margin of the tooth to remain exposed or you have gum recession from periodontal disease, dental plaque can accumulate in the gap and cause enamel erosion beneath the crown resulting in a cavity. Similarly, wear and tear on crowns placed on molars can crack because of the extra chewing forces or teeth grinding. The cracks allow cavity-causing bacteria to penetrate the crown to attack the natural tooth beneath it.
Root canal failure would be another reason for cavities under dental crowns, especially if the tooth undergoing the treatment had some infection left within without successful removal. In addition, ill-fitting crowns and poor oral hygiene can also encourage bacteria in the mouth to create cavities in the crowned tooth. Therefore if you have a dental crown covering a tooth or two, kindly do not presume you are free from the problem of dental cavities forever because your mouth bacteria continues to remain active even after you lose all your teeth and don’t have any crowns in the mouth.
Dental crowns are incredibly durable solutions to restore damaged and decayed teeth besides working as replacements for missing teeth. However, while the crowns themselves are not vulnerable to the bacteria in the mouth, the underlying tissues and bones are an exception. Therefore even after getting your tooth restored and fixed, you must maintain excellent dental hygiene to ensure you never develop cavities beneath the crown.
A cavity beneath a dental crown entails a procedure requiring the removal of the dental crown, cleaning the hole, and restoring your tooth with a new replacement. Occasionally if the tooth is beyond repair, the dentist might suggest removing the tooth to replace it with a dental implant with a dental crown mounted atop it. However, if you care for your teeth and the dental crown by preventing decay in your mouth, you benefit from the restoration for a decade or more without needing additional repairs.
If you need to restore a tooth damaged due to decay or aesthetic reasons, Sleek Smile Studio can help restore your teeth with natural-looking and feeling dental crowns. However, kindly do not assume the crown is invulnerable to decay or damage. Discuss your needs with the practice to receive a restoration that best suits our needs.