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What Are Dental Caps?

A dental cap, or a crown as they're sometimes called, is a custom-made covering for your tooth. You might need a cap if part of your tooth is missing or if your tooth is cracked or at risk of fracturing. A cap can strengthen your tooth by holding it together. It can also improve the appearance of your teeth by covering up stains and chips.

  1. Types of Caps

    • A cap can be made of metal, porcelain or plastic; each type covers your entire tooth. Two porcelain cap-making methods are available: felspathic and pressed ceramic porcelain. The felspathic method is the oldest and is done by baking porcelain onto tinfoil, which is then heated in an oven. Pressed ceramic is created from a single piece of porcelain and milled to create the desired shape. A cap can also be made of porcelain and resin, porcelain and metal, or gold.

    Fitting the Cap

    • The actual fitting of a dental cap involves removing the damaged or decayed part of the tooth. The next step is having an impression, or mold, made of your tooth using a silicone-like material. The dental lab forms the crown according to this impression taken at your dentist's office. You'll wear a temporary cap for about two weeks until the permanent cap is ready. The permanent cap will then be cemented onto your tooth with cement matching the color of your adjacent teeth.

    Advantages and Disadvantages

    • Gold caps are the simplest type of cap you can get. One advantage of gold is that less of the tooth that's going to be capped will have to be removed. Gold also provides a better fit and is healthier for the surrounding gum tissue. Porcelain or resin caps are the best looking because they can easily be matched to your adjacent teeth, but more of the tooth has to be removed and it's harder to get a good fit.

    CAD/CAM Dentistry

    • Computer-aided design or computer-aided manufacturing is a fairly new technology that makes dental caps using a computer. An impression is taken of the tooth. From the impression, a cap is milled out of a block of porcelain. After the tooth is prepared, photos are taken of it by a computer. This data is then entered into a milling machine that produces the cap. The CAD/CAM procedure provides a fit comparable with traditional methods.

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