Dental crowns are artificial teeth. They may be placed over existing tooth structure to strengthen them or to protect them for further damage or for replacement of missing tooth/teeth.
Dental crowns can be of many types depending on the material used for fabrication-all metal crown, Metal ceramic crown or a full ceramic crown.
Metal crowns are very limited in use due to their unacceptable appearance and full ceramic crowns are expensive. This makes metal ceramic crown the material of choice as it combines strength and aesthetics and is slightly economic too.
Metal ceramic crown price can vary tremendously depending on the type of metal you opt for -from non-precious metal (Cobalt, chromium). Semi precious (alloys of silver, gold, platinum, palladium) to precious metals (containing high percentage of gold).
Metal ceramic crowns have been used in dentistry for over 5 decades. It has an inner core of metal over which tooth-coloured material (ceramic) is fused at very high temperature. So basically, it is a 2 core material. It takes advantage of the cosmetic look of the ceramic couples to the strength of metal coping inside. These crowns still account of over 70% of all crowns made even today. Infact ceramic fused to gold coping crowns has been regarded as the best material for crowns due to its gum friendly nature.
However, a major disadvantage with metal ceramic crowns is that the top ceramic coating can sometime chip off, exposing the inner metal core which does not look good, specially if it is on front tooth. This is a major reason of choosing all ceramic crowns over metal ceramic crowns.
People generally assume that dental crowns made anywhere would be the same. For crown fabrication, the tooth needs to be shaped and finished, which is purely a hand work. So the crown even for the same tooth made by different dentist will differ depending on how they have shaped and finished the tooth.
