Crowns Vs. Bridges: What’s the Difference?

Dental crowns and bridges are among the workhorses of oral health treatment, restoring damaged or missing teeth and helping you preserve a beautiful smile. 

While they serve similar purposes (i.e., oral function and smile restoration), they’re used in very different ways, and understanding those differences is key to ensuring you receive appropriate care to prevent more serious problems.

Amy Morris, DDS, and our team at Morris Dental Associates offer both crowns and bridges using the most advanced materials and state-of-the-art techniques for beautiful, durable, natural-looking results. Here, Dr. Morris offers a quick overview of both options to help you understand when they’re used, and how each restoration is applied.

Understanding dental crowns

A dental crown is an artificial tooth. Much like a protective “jacket” that’s designed to fit over a damaged tooth, it provides added strength and protection while improving the appearance of the smile. Crowns are made of durable materials like porcelain that can be tinted to match your natural teeth so they blend in beautifully.

Crowns are often used to cap and protect a tooth that’s badly damaged by decay or traumatic damage, like a chip, fracture, or crack. Because it completely covers a tooth, a crown can help prevent further damage, too.

They’re also frequently used following a root canal procedure to add strength and protection to the treated tooth. Adding a crown also preserves the tooth’s healthy appearance, hiding discoloration that typically follows root canal treatment. Crowns are also how we finish off a dental implant (artificial tooth root). 

By restoring a tooth that’s damaged, discolored, or misshapen, a dental crown preserves your bite balance, preventing jaw strain and pain that can happen if that balance is altered by a change in the shape or integrity of your tooth. And of course, a crown improves the aesthetics of your smile by concealing damage or discoloration. 

The crown process

Crowns usually take two office visits. During the first visit, we shape the underlying tooth and prepare it for the crown. Then we make an impression that serves as a mold for your new crown and place a temporary crown over your tooth to protect it while the permanent crown is made at a specialized dental lab. 

Most crowns are ready within a couple of weeks, at which time you come back to our office and we apply the crown using a very strong dental adhesive.

The role of a dental bridge

While crowns help restore damaged teeth, a dental bridge is designed to replace one or more teeth that are missing. Bridges improve the way your smile looks, and they also help maintain your normal bite balance, warding off jaw strain and pain that can happen when a missing tooth changes the way your jaw joints function.

A bridge is composed of a supporting framework attached to one or more “artificial” teeth (sometimes also referred to as crowns). The bridge is attached to the teeth on either side of the gap left by missing teeth. Like a crown, the artificial teeth in a bridge restoration are custom tinted to match your natural teeth. 

Getting a dental bridge

Bridges also usually take two office visits. At the first visit, we prepare the teeth used to support your bridge. That means shaping those teeth and preparing them for permanent crowns. Crowns are placed on the supporting natural teeth to protect them and provide added strength necessary to support the bridge.

We also take impressions during your first visit. These impressions act as models for your final bridge and for the crowns that support it. Once your bridge is ready, you’ll come back to the office so we can put it in place and adjust it for a perfect, comfortable fit.

Caring for crowns and bridges

Crowns and bridges may be used for different purposes, but they both enhance your smile and your oral health. They both benefit from good oral hygiene — that means twice daily brushing, daily flossing, and regular trips to our office for checkups and professional cleanings.

It’s also important to note that the porcelain material used in crowns and bridges can’t be whitened. If whitening is important to you, we recommend having a professional whitening treatment prior to crown or bridge placement to ensure the tint of your restoration matches your natural teeth when they look their best. That way, future whitening treatments ensure all your teeth “match” and blend beautifully.

Improve your oral health and your smile, too

Conveniently located in Abilene, Texas, Morris Dental Associates is proud to serve patients in Abilene, Sweetwater, Brownwood, Eastland, and the surrounding areas. To learn more about crowns and bridges and how they can help you enjoy healthier, more beautiful, more confident smiles, request an appointment online or over the phone today.