What Can Cause a Crown to Fall Out?
Your dentist’s skill is a very important factor in determining the success of a crown.
Crowns are a very useful dental restoration that can help save severely decayed or damaged teeth from extraction. While the average crown will last 10 years or more, unfortunately some people do need their crowns replaced sooner.
Let’s take a look at some of the possible reasons this may happen:
Decay: Perhaps the most common reason for a crown to fail and even fall out is that the patient has not kept the crown clean. Even in the case of a full crown that goes all the way down to the gum line, it is still possible for bacteria to find the edge between the tooth structure and the crown and cause decay. If you do not brush and floss around your crown daily, eventually the decay may work its way into the tooth structure beneath the crown and cause failure.
Diet: Temporary crowns (which may be placed to protect your tooth while you wait for your permanent crown to be prepared by the dental lab) can easily be dislodged by eating sticky or chewy foods. However, this should not happen with a permanent crown, unless some other factor such as decay has already made the crown vulnerable.
Stress: Many of the same activities that can chip or break your teeth can also damage a crown. This includes grinding your teeth at night, chewing ice, or using your teeth as tools. Again, the crown is not really likely to fall out under these kinds of stresses unless it is already weakened.
Bad Cement: One very rare cause of a crown falling out could be bad dental cement. If the cement was prepared incorrectly or got contaminated somehow, its integrity would be compromised, resulting in a poor bond.
Poor Tooth Preparation: Crowns can definitely be more prone to falling out if you did not use an experienced dentist who took the time and effort to prepare the tooth properly to receive the crown.
In order to hold a full crown, the tooth must be cut down into a sort of peg. The easiest thing to do is to cut the tooth so that the bottom is much wider than the top and the crown can just slide right on. However, research has shown that the greater the difference between the top and bottom of the peg, the greater the risk of failure. After all, a crown that slid on easily could slide off easily too. A dentist that is skilled in crown placement will make the peg with a very slight tapering from bottom to top to help promote a long service life.
In cases where there is very little tooth structure left to hold the crown, you will also need a very skilled dentist. Your dentist can compensate for a short tooth peg with techniques like retentive grooves to help create a strong bond for a long service life for your crown.
Skipping Dental Visits: It’s important to note that in most cases there are warning signs before your crown actually falls out. By visiting the dentist regularly, you get an excellent chance of having these signs identified early. This way, you can have the crown replaced or re-cemented before it actually falls out.
