Your best smile may be just a short consultation away. Dunkling and Penney Dentistry in Burlington and Jericho, VT, dentists, Dr. Paul Dunkling and Dr. Greg Penney, skillfully place dental crowns and bridges to beautify smiles and boost their strength and function. Does your smile need help? Then, these reliable prosthetics may be for you.
What is a dental crown?
A dental crown is a tooth-shaped jacket of high-quality porcelain, custom-made and fitted by your Burlington dentist to cover and support a weak, damage, decayed or heavily restored tooth. Substituting for tooth extraction, a crown spares as much healthy enamel as possible and leaves everything below the gums in place. Crowns also refinish tooth replacements known as dental implants, and they enhance and protect teeth saved by root canal therapy.
What is a dental bridge?
Used for generations to fill gaps left by tooth loss, fixed bridgework restores smile aesthetics and oral function. Also, it keeps teeth next to a gap in place, ensuring their proper position, alignment, and bite.
Composed of one or more porcelain pontics, or artificial teeth, bridges attach to neighboring teeth via porcelain crowns. The wider the bridge is, the more crowns are required to support it. Some bridgework may be attached to the jaw via multiple titanium implants inserted into the bone for superior anchorage.
Are crowns and implants your best choice?
Your dentist in Burlington can tell you for sure when he examines your teeth and gums, takes digital X-rays, and uses oral impressions to create a negative imprint of your dentition (the arrangement of your remaining teeth). Crowns and bridges are crafted precisely at an area dental lab and match remaining teeth in configuration, color, and size.
Benefits of crowns and bridges
1. Crowns completely avoid needless extraction with its jaw bone recession, compromised oral function, and embarrassing smile gaps.
2. Crowns replace weak, missing, and sometimes ugly tooth structure with premium quality porcelain.
3. Crowns last for many years when you take proper care of them. Ten years is about average.
4. Bridges fill wide gaps and allow you to eat and speak normally once again.
5. Bridges last 10 years or even more, and research from the University of Rochester Medical Center shows some bridges lasting for the balance of patients' lives--decades, in other words.
Look your best, and be confident
Crowns and bridgework from Dunkling and Penney Dentistry help you achieve both. If you'd like a consultation on these innovative and reliable dental appliances, please call one of our convenient office for a consultation. In Burlington, phone (802) 863-3479. For our Jericho location, phone (802) 899-3973.