CEREC Same Day Crowns

Benefits of CEREC

Thanks to this state of the art technology, your crown is created in our office from digital imaging. There is no need for messy impressions, and nothing is shipped out to a lab.

There is no need for a second appointment. The entire process, from tooth prep through final crown placement, is performed in a single sitting.

You do not need to rely on a temporary acrylic crown, which can be uncomfortable and may fall out.

CEREC crowns use top-quality dental porcelain that can be color-matched to your teeth. There is no metal, no dark line near your gumline, and no difference in appearance from the rest of your teeth.

CEREC is a truly revolutionary approach to dental restorations. Whether you have tooth decay, unsightly old crowns, or metal fillings that need to be removed, CEREC lets us provide high-quality, natural-appearing restorations in just a single visit.

Of course, like any other dental procedure, CEREC is not appropriate for every situation. Your dentist will carefully assess your needs and make a professional treatment recommendation. For many patients, though, CEREC same day crowns are an excellent way to quickly, economically, and conveniently restore heavily decayed or damaged teeth. If you are interested in learning more about this highly advanced technology, call Emerson Dental today at 978-399-0017.

In the past, or in dental offices that do not utilize CEREC or CADCAM technology, patients who required laboratory-fabricated dental restorations such as crowns, inlays or onlays, endured gooey impressions during their first visit, followed by uncomfortable temporary plastic crowns that they’d wear for two weeks until their permanent restoration was completed. Many patients found these temporary crowns would become loose or fall out.
At Emerson Dental we offer our patients a CAD/CAM technology known as CEREC. Traditional impressions are eliminated and replaced with state-of-the-art digital scanning technology. The digitally scanned image of your tooth is sent to our in-office milling unit, which will create and custom design your new, metal-free restoration using the same highest quality materials that dental laboratories use. With CEREC there is no need for second appointments, impressions and molds, or temporary plastic crowns. To learn more about CEREC and same day digital dentistry, schedule an appointment today with one of our dentists to discuss your specific treatment needs.

At Emerson Dental we subscribe to a philosophy firmly grounded in conservative comprehensive care, along with a proactive approach towards preventative care and patient education. It is our belief that every patient should be presented with options that best restore their teeth, oral health, and overall well-being.

By adopting this approach to dental treatment, we are not just improving your oral health, we are also avoiding situations where teeth may begin to fail, fracture, or become infected. Waiting until your teeth break or bother you often leads to more extensive and costly dental treatment than if these same teeth were restored and reinforced earlier.

With this approach, you can often avoid root canal treatments, extraction of teeth or other surgical procedures, and more involved general dental procedures such as implants or dentures. Most importantly, we are able to keep your teeth in the best possible condition so they can continue doing all the everyday things they were designed for, like smiling and eating all your favorite foods without restriction.

Over the lifetime of a tooth with an amalgam, or “silver filling,” a number of complications can occur. Aside from being unattractive, silver fillings can weaken the surrounding tooth structure over time. Silver fillings expand and contract in response to temperature variations in our mouths and this expansion and contraction almost always leads to cracks in the amalgam fillings themselves, and can even affect the surrounding tooth structure, causing it to fracture and break as well.

These cracks allow the bacteria in our saliva to leak underneath the silver fillings and cause decay around and under the filling itself. Over time, decay and micro-cracks eventually weaken the tooth further, often resulting in a major break of part of the silver filling or a fracture of part of your tooth. At Emerson Dental, our dentists offer many superior alternatives to silver fillings that are not only esthetically pleasing, but also healthier for your teeth. Depending on the condition of your tooth and filling, options for replacing old fillings include composite (tooth-colored) fillings, porcelain inlays or onlays, and metal-free crowns. All of these provide a much better aesthetic and a healthy long-term result.

The black or gray outline you see is an indication that there is metal underneath the porcelain of the crown. These PFM, or porcelain fused to metal, crowns were very commonly used prior to the advent of the more modern materials we now have at our disposal. 

The black line was probably not visible when the crown was first made and placed. Over time, irritation and inflammation from the metal has caused the gum tissue to recede away from the margin of the crown, and exposing the dark line you see today. At Emerson Dental we only use metal-free porcelain/ceramic based crowns, eliminating those unattractive dark lines.