Smile Gallery: Dental Crowns

I like to think of gold onlays as conservative crowns. That's because i don't have to remove nearly as much natural tooth structure to do them. And no restorative material is as good as natural tooth. An onlay, as opposed to an inlay, covers at least one cusp. You can think of a cusp as each little "mountain" or bump on your tooth. Some people say that gold is not aesthetic (despite loving Jack Sparrow and his golden front tooth), but I just love the way the yellow compliments the white surrounding the glassy smooth margin. Then again, often you can have ...

Often I will recommend a dental implant to replace a single missing tooth. But in some cases (like this one) it makes more sense to restore the area with a bridge. You can see that the molar has a large filling in it that was previously held together with a band, and the premolar already has a crown on it (don't have to worry about removing natural tooth structure since it's already been done). You might also wonder about why the bridge isn't all tooth colored (the second molar has a metal "island" on it). This is so that we ...