I had a dental crown from a previous dentist that broke after a few years. I decided to get a CEREC crown this go-round because my dentist recently got the machine and explained how much faster it works. I’ve only had a couple of crowns before and they’ve never felt this way. It almost feels like a wad of something is stuck there. Is this normal? Could my dentist make it feel better in my mouth?

Annette

Dear Annette,

When a crown is fitted properly, you don’t notice it at all. It’s like having a healthy tooth there. My guess is the struggle your dentist is having is because in a normal situation the software would build the crown from images of an existing tooth that needed to be crowned. In your situation, the tooth had already been crowned so the new one had to be built from scratch.

You mentioned your dentist recently acquired the CEREC crown machine. He or she may not yet have enough experience with the software to do this well yet.

Fixing it is possible, but not in your mouth. The crown will need to be removed and re-done. You have two choices with that. Your first choice is to ask your dentist to replace the crown using the traditional means. That will require a temporary crown and short wait before your permanent crown is ready. This will pretty much guarantee you’ll get a crown that fits.

A second option is to give your dentist another chance. This will give him or her some practice. Because you are a learning tool, you could ask for a discount, which would be a partial refund in your case, as you shouldn’t have to pay for the same crown twice.

The good news is even though your dentist wasn’t able to pull this off on the first try, they are definitely increasing their knowledge and acquiring the new technology in their field. That is always a good quality in a dentist.

This blog is brought to you by Portage, MI cosmetic dentist Dr. Susan Dennis.