Looking to have a crown replacement

[Glen]

Hi

I had a crown done on my top front middle tooth three years ago. The tooth had discoloured and my dentist did a root canal and then put a crown on top of it to cover up the tooth discolouration.

Over the last year or so, I have noticed a metal line around the crown which shows when I smile and is very obvious on photos taken of my face. Also the crown is looking different in colour to the rest of my teeth.

I remember when the crown was originally done, the colour of it matched the rest of my teeth well but now it looks completely different, so I would like a crown replacement to have a crown that matches the rest of my teeth better than this current crown.

My current crown is a metal ceramic crown and I would like to know if you would recommend an all ceramic crown for this front tooth instead and how do you would make the replacement crown match the rest of my teeth well.

[Dr Mohsen J. Esfahani]

Thank you for your post.

I generally do recommend all ceramic crowns on front teeth because in my opinion, they look better than metal ceramic crowns on front teeth and if your gum shrinks back, as all ceramic crowns have no metal underneath them, no metal line will show. However if the gum does shrink back, the yellow dentine colour of the root will show.

I would send you to a cosmetic lab for a lab shade taken so that we have the best chance of matching the colour of the rest of your teeth. Sometimes whitening the rest of your teeth helps with matching the colour of your teeth.