3 Advantages Of Using A Dental Implant To Restore Your Broken Tooth Instead Of Using A Crown
A broken tooth, whether from trauma or extensive decay, can mar your smile and increase your risk of oral disease. A broken and uneven tooth is more difficult to keep clean through brushing and flossing, which can lead to bacteria accumulating on the tooth and causing tooth decay or gum disease.
Two common methods of restoring a broken tooth are to attach a crown to the remaining tooth or extract the tooth and replace it with a dental implant. While a dental implant is more expensive, it's typically the better option. If you're planning to restore your broken tooth, read on to learn three advantages of using a dental implant instead of using a crown.
1. Dental Implants Are a More Durable Replacement
When a dentist uses a crown to replace a broken tooth, the crown is bonded to the remaining tooth using a very strong adhesive. Unfortunately, the crown can fall out if the remaining tooth breaks apart. This can happen if your broken tooth has extensive decay, which makes it weak and brittle.
Dental implants provide a more durable option to replace your broken tooth. After extracting your tooth, your dentist will insert the implant into your jawbone, where it will fuse with the bone. They'll attach a crown to the implant to act as your replacement tooth. An implant is reliant on the strength of your natural tooth in order to stay in place since it's fused to your jawbone, which makes it a better option to replace a broken tooth that has weakened due to decay.
2. Dental Implants Eliminate the Risk of an Infection in the Tooth Root
Using a crown to replace a tooth will preserve the existing root of your tooth. One downside of this is that the root of your tooth is still vulnerable to becoming infected by the bacteria in your mouth. This can happen if your remaining natural tooth starts to decay or if the crown cracks and allows bacteria to invade the root of the tooth. Treating an infected tooth root requires a root canal, which is a lengthy procedure.
You can avoid the risk of needing a root canal by using an implant to replace your broken tooth since the entire tooth, including the root, will be removed before replacing the tooth.
3. Dental Implants Can Provide a Natural-Looking Replacement
If your tooth is badly broken and you don't have much remaining, then it may be difficult to create a natural-looking crown. There may not be enough remaining tooth left to support a large crown. When using a dental implant to replace a broken tooth, the amount of remaining tooth you have left isn't a problem, since the tooth will be extracted anyway.
When you have a badly broken tooth that's affecting your smile, it's often best to replace it with a dental implant instead of using a crown. While a crown is less expensive, an implant will be more durable and less prone to falling out.
Contact your dentist to learn more about dental implants.
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