Dental crowns, or caps, restore failing tooth structure to full strength and excellent smile aesthetics. Does Mom need a Chaska dental crown but dreads the 2, 3 or 4 appointment process? The good news is Chaska Dental Center offers one-visit dental crowns to patients in the 55318 area.
What is a dental crown?
A dental crown is a custom-fabricated restoration that replaces tooth structure compromised by
- Injury, resulting in a fracture or crack
- Extensive tooth decay
- Multiple fillings
- Abscess, or infection
- Root canal, or endodontic, therapy
- Discoloration from cancer or other pharmaceutical therapy
Traditionally made from gold, metal alloy or metal fused to porcelain, dental crowns are now available in solid porcelain. Drs. Thomas J. Meschke and Aaron B. Swingdorf of Chaska Dental Center offer innovative all-porcelain crowns to qualified patients. Brilliantly beautiful and color-matched, these restorations seamlessly blend in shade and bite with the rest of the patient’s teeth.
What is CEREC?
CEREC stands for CEramic Reconstruction. In just one dental appointment of one to 2 hours at Chaska Dental Center, the 55318 dentist takes the patient from oral exams and imaging to impressions to manufacture and placement of a brand new crown. He can do it for your Mom, too!
The doctor uses an infrared camera to take “digital impressions” of the tooth and the surrounding oral structure. Gone are the days of gooey, messy and uncomfortable impression trays, and the days and days of waiting while a lab constructs a dental cap.
Instead, the CEREC system takes the digital information and translates it to a computerized model of the patient’s mouth. From there, the dentist designs and actually manufactures Mom’s brand-new restoration right in the treatment room.
Every detail of Mom’s old tooth–color, size and shape–are mimicked by the CEREC milling machine. Amazingly, the machine produces a lifelike rendering from a solid block of ceramic in about 15 to 20 minutes. Dr. Swingdorf or Meschke then takes the new crown and adjusts the shading and bite, if necessary, and polishes it to a brilliant shine.
The machine produces such an accurate restoration that the crown usually fits the patient’s mouth perfectly the very first try-on. The dentist bonds the crown in place with special adhesive.
The CEREC method is versatile, too. The dentists use it to make inlays and onlays–partial crowns– as well as full dental crowns. These partial restorations replace old, ugly metal fillings, beautifying and strengthening tooth structure.
Lastly, patients easily care for their Chaska dental crowns with routine brushing and flossing at home and 6-month check-ups and cleanings with Drs. Meschke and Swingdorf. These brilliant crowns last for years and look wonderful, too.
Learn more
If you’d like to explore dental crowns in time for Mother’s Day or any other time, just contact Chaska Dental Center to arrange a smile consultation. The team would be happy to explain the CEREC process to you!
