CEREC Archives - Smile Glen Ellyn Restorative Dentist
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1Dec

Millions of people all over the United States would love to improve their smiles. You may be one of them.

You might look at your teeth and wish there was something you could change. Even one bad tooth can be enough to change the appearance of your smile and affect your ability to bite and chew your food.

Fixing your smile may seem daunting, especially at first. How many trips will you need to make to the dentist? How long will it take?

Thankfully, there is a simple solution, CEREC same-day dental crowns. In one visit to our dentist office, the team at Smile Glen Ellyn can craft a dental crown for you that looks and functions like a real tooth.

Simple process

CEREC dental crowns offer patients an easy, effective way to fix a number of problems. CEREC is short for Chairside Economical Restoration of Esthetic Ceramics.

What that means is that we can do in about an hour what may take weeks at another dentist office.

The process starts when we make a “digital impression” of the tooth or teeth that need work. Our dentist then reshapes your tooth into an abutment that will support your dental crown.

At other offices, this may require sending your impression to a laboratory. The lab will then craft a dental crown for you as soon as they are able. Who knows how many dentists and how many patients send requests to that lab? It could be weeks before they are able to get to your dental crown and send it back to the dentist.

With CEREC, we can skip that step, which saves you from having to make an extra trip to the dentist. With CEREC, we use our on-site milling machine to craft your dental crown while you wait.

Using computer software, we are able to send a digital impression of your teeth to the CEREC machine. The machine turns that information into a dental crown for you.

You can walk in with a tooth that has been bothering you and go home with a natural-looking smile. It really is that easy.

Simple product

How can we make your dental crowns so quickly? CEREC crowns are made from one thing — porcelain.

Many other dental crowns are made by fusing porcelain to metal. This makes the crafting process more complex, since two separate pieces need to be made to fit together.

Some patients are allergic to the metals used in these crowns. If you are one of those patients, the metal in your crown could irritate your gums.

With CEREC dental crowns, you won’t have worry about either of these issues.

Because CEREC crowns are made with one substance, they can be crafted more quickly. We entering your information into our machine, and the machine mills a piece of porcelain into the precise shape of a healthy, natural tooth.

Simple solution

When your CEREC dental crowns are placed in your mouth, you will see and feel the difference. It’s an easy way to fix any number of dental problems in less time.

If you have tooth decay, you know that it changes the color of your teeth. Yellow teeth and teeth with dark, ugly spots stand out for all the wrong reasons.

Just as important, tooth decay weakens your teeth. This can make your teeth more sensitive, which can make it painful to eat certain kinds of foods.

Likewise, chipped and broken teeth can make you more self-conscious about your smile, and create problems with your bite.

With either of these tooth problems, CEREC crowns can repair the appearance of your teeth and restore your bite force. On a practical level, you can smile without feeling self-conscious, and you can eat without worry.

Simply call

You know better than anyone how a tooth problem can affect you. It may reduce your self-confidence or force you to give up eating certain things. With CEREC dental crowns, you can get back your smile, regain your chewing ability, and have both in less time than you would with other crowns.

The easiest way to get your teeth back into shape is to call Smile Glen Ellyn to make an appointment. Use our online form or call our office at 630-858-8800 to schedule your visit.

28Jul

Technology is important in every field. Teachers are using iPads and interactive boards to improve the learning of their students. Mechanics use electronic equipment to better diagnose your car’s engine trouble. Chefs use the latest technology to cook food faster and tastier. The dental office is no different.

There aren’t many dental office in Glen Ellyn, IL that are doing the type of work we are doing. We are dedicated to finding the best solutions to your smile problems, which means we are constantly seeking new technological advances that will help you get the smile of your dreams.

This takes shape in many forms. One of our staff’s favorite procedures is anything that involves the CEREC machine. CEREC stands for CERamic REConstruction. It is a computer-driven machine that we use most often to create ceramic crowns for our patients while they wait! This can often save the tooth from a lot more trauma down the road. Let’s see how it works.

When a Crown is Needed

A crown is a necessary dental restoration when a tooth can no longer function on its own. Whether that is because the tooth is broken, cracked, or has had a filling go bad, a crown can be placed over the entire tooth, which will reinforce the tooth and give it back its functionality. In many cases, crowns are needed quickly to protect a tooth from infection or further damage. The old way of creating crowns sometimes lead to very serious problems! Take a look below.

Traditional Crown Development

In the past, a crown was developed over several appointments. It began by preparing the tooth (removing enamel) for the crown. Impressions were made and sent off to the lab for crown creation. Then, the patient played the waiting game for a few weeks and hoped that the new crown would be a perfect fit! In the meantime, the patient had to wear a temporary crown, which are known for breaking and falling off.

While most crowns worked just fine, there were far too many cases of crowns NOT working. A temporary would break and lead to an infection, which would require a root canal. Sometimes a crown would not fit and would have to be sent back to the lab for an even longer waiting time!

Patients needed a better solution, which is why we invested in our very own CEREC milling machine. CEREC has transformed the crown process into something that is reliable and dependable.

CEREC Differences

CEREC is much different from the traditional process because it is fast, highly effective, and very safe for your teeth. None of the problems mentioned above happen with CEREC because the process has changed so completely! Take a look at what we mean.

Fast – The several week process outlined above has been condensed into a single appointment. That’s right. One single trip to the dentist is all it takes to get a permanent crown! There is no waiting period because the crown is crafted right here in our office while you wait. The milling machine with carve out the perfect crown, and if it has a flaw, we can quickly repeat the process so you don’t want out of our office until you have your permanent crown in place!

Effective – Messy impressions are not the best way to measure and map teeth. Using digital, 3D imaging is the best way to create a perfectly-fitting crown. Part of the CEREC process is taking these images of your teeth to create a map for the milling machine. It all works together in one fluid process to give you the best outcome possible: a crown that fits perfectly!

Safe – There’s no reason to fear for your teeth during the CEREC process. We will remove the necessary enamel, but there’s no risk of an infection because we will seal your tooth with a permanent crown on the same day! You don’t have to fear a root canal or broken temporary crown when you have CEREC on your side.

A Dental Restoration in One Day

At the end of the day, CEREC does what no other dental restoration device can do: provides a quality crown in a single day. Contact our office today to learn more. We would love to show you the CEREC in action or just answer the questions you have about the process. We hope you’ll never need CEREC technology, but if you do, it’s right here waiting for you!

1May

Do you have a fractured or cracked tooth? Maybe you had an accident, or you simply haven’t been taking care of your teeth like you should. Whatever the reason, you’re going to need a crown.

You might not be a Princess Kate or a Prince William. In our Glen Ellyn, IL practice you still get the royal treatment when it comes to your crown, with CEREC.

When a royal wants something, they want it right when they need it, right when it’s asked for. CEREC allows you to do the same thing! Conventional crowns (and bridges, for that matter, we just couldn’t think of a clever way to tie that to the royal family) can take multiple appointments to design, make, and install.

CEREC uses advanced technologies to reduce the time it takes to complete a crown or bridge down to a single appointment. CEREC has other advantages as well!

CEREC VS. Conventional Dental Restorations

Before CEREC, getting a crown or bridge (collectively called dental restorations) was a long, drawn out process that could take weeks to complete. The most lengthy part of the procedure doesn’t even involve the patient. The longest part of the procedure is waiting for the restoration to actually be made.

After the first appointment, the dentist uses an impression (mold) of the patient’s teeth and uses it to design the needed restoration.

Next, the milling process begins. This is the point in the process where the restoration is actually made. Some dentists have in-house milling facilities, but most don’t. This means that the dentist would have to order the restoration from a specialized lab. Even if a dentist had the required equipment to make the crown on the premises, it still takes weeks to complete the job. Eventually though the patient comes in for a second appointment to have the restoration installed.

All this waiting isn’t just inconvenient for the patient: it’s dangerous!

While the restoration is being milled, the patient wears a temporary crown. Temporary crowns can break easily, and the tooth can become seriously infected. If this happens, the patient not only has a broken temporary crown to deal with, but also a root canal.

Conventional restorations are also limited in terms of design. That means there is a limit to how much damage a conventional restoration can repair. For example, if you have a tooth that is broken close to the gum, a conventional crown won’t be able to save the tooth, and it will need to be extracted.

Conventional restorations are also held together by metal; while that might sound durable, they are constructed in such a way that they tend to “shear off” (break) inside the mouth. This happens more than you think, and when it does, you have to start the whole process all over again to get it replaced (including the impression of your teeth; it’s not like they fit in your file very easily!). The metal could also cause an allergic reaction in some patients.

It’s easy to understand why people are so upset when they learn they need a crown or bridge installed!

How is CEREC Better?

CEREC stands for Chairside Economical Restoration of Esthetic Ceramics.

Chairside, because everything happens in-house. The entire process, from impression to installation. No need for the dentist to wait for your restoration to come back from the lab (and no chance that the designs for your restoration won’t be lost in the mail, either!).

Economical, because CEREC uses advanced technologies that simply leave conventional methods in the dust.

CEREC eliminates all the wasted time usually needed to design, make, and install a restoration.

Instead of taking a physical impression of your teeth (which is also no fun for the patient), CEREC uses advanced imaging technology to take a digital impression of your teeth. This has a few advantages:

One, it is a much faster process than creating a physical impression and is much more comfortable,

Two, it is much more accurate, and

Three, if your restoration breaks, the digital impression can be stored indefinitely as a computer file. If you ever have a broken crown or bridge, a new one can quickly be milled using the digital impression made for your original restoration.

After the digital impression is made, it is fed into specialized software that creates a design based on this extremely accurate “map” of your teeth and mouth. Your dentist may also make some adjustments to the design based upon your needs.

Restoration of Esthetic Ceramics: There is no need to send anything to an off-site location to make a restoration, but most importantly CEREC technology rapidly accelerates the milling process. With the design complete, an auto-milling machine will create your restoration out of a single block of porcelain. Porcelain is ideal because it is hypoallergenic, and it comes in many shades that match your natural teeth, making your restoration virtually invisible to anyone else.

Because the design and milling machine are so precise and fast, you can have a restoration that wasn’t possible just a few years ago, saving you from a painful and possibly traumatic tooth extraction (which can often involve surgery!).

Installation: Incredibly, all this activity happens in-house, and in the same appointment. This is how CEREC eliminates most of the trouble with dental restorations, by doing away with all that wasted time. This also means that temporary restorations are a thing of the past, and a patient’s chances of having an infection as a result shrink to zero.

Make an Appointment Today!

Conventional crowns and bridges put your oral health at risk and waste your valuable time, and when compared to the quality and look of a CEREC restoration, they just don’t stack up.

If you need a dental restoration (a crown or a bridge), choose CEREC and Smile Glen Ellyn!

Call us at 630-858-8800, or use our online appointment form to connect with us and book your appointment now!

17Mar

Have you heard someone remind you that you only live once? Usually this is meant to encourage you to live life to the fullest, but when we hear that phrase, we think of something different for your teeth. This phrase makes us think about the fact that you only live with one set of adult teeth!

Sure, you get a set of baby teeth first, but those teeth will only last for the first six or seven years of your life. You will then have 70+ years of time with your new adult teeth. When you think about your teeth that way, you will realize just how important it is to take care of those chompers along the way!

When teeth become damaged, you need to take the time to correct those teeth. Today, we want to take some time to talk about the importance of dental restorations and how we can improve the entire restoration procedure for you, our patient!

The Important Role of Restorations

You see, when a tooth has been damaged, there is no way for it to repair itself. Over time, the damage simply progresses into something much more alarming! Something like a small cavity will continue to grow if it is not restored with a filling. Eventually, the cavity will weaken the tooth to such an extent that it cannot be saved!

Whether you are dealing with a small cavity or a missing tooth entirely, restoring that damage is imperative to maintaining a healthy smile. After all, you only have one set of adult teeth, and research shows that adults who wear dentures lose up to 10 years off of their lifespan!

So the next time you are weighing the pros and cons of your dental restoration, remember that your future life could be at stake!

The Old Way of Doing Things

In the past, a restoration (like a crown or inlay/onlay) would be a bit of a hassle to have created and placed in your mouth. The entire process would take 2-3 appointments, a few weeks, and lots of waiting.

It would begin with an appointment where we discover the problem. We would go ahead and prepare your tooth, take an impression, and place a temporary crown so that your tooth is covered while you wait for your permanent crown to be crafted in a lab somewhere across town.

In a few weeks, your crown would come in, and we would call you back into the office to bond it permanently in place. That is, of course, assuming that the crown fit correctly! If it did not, we would have to take fresh impressions and give you a few more weeks of waiting before we could actually completely restore your teeth.

Don’t Play the Waiting Game!

Waiting for restorations is not an acceptable option for you. Waiting for a permanent crown can put your teeth at risk for infection, which is why we recommend using a CEREC solution whenever possible.

Whether you are restoring a large cavity or a complete tooth, waiting will put you at risk for other, more serious problems.

CEREC Capabilities

To really understand the benefit to you as a patient, you first need to understand what CEREC actually does. CEREC is a computer-based milling machine that creates a 3D map of your teeth and then sends the information to an in-house milling machine. That machine then creates the restoration needed so that it fits your tooth perfectly.

We can complete this entire process in a single appointment. In fact, you can sit back and read an article from your favorite magazine while you wait. If there is a mistake, we can turn around and redo the restoration without asking you to go home for another few weeks of waiting!

What Can I Get?

CEREC works well for most major restorations. We can create inlays, onlays, and crowns right here in the office! Small fillings will still be completed using composite resin, but CEREC will take care of larger restorations so that you can always have a restoration completed in a single appointment.

Learn More

Are you ready to improve your dental experience? Let CEREC improve your restoration experience by saving you a lot of time and hassle. Learn more right here in our advanced dental office!

Contact us today to set up an appointment or consultation. We can’t wait to see you soon so that we can help you have a healthier smile that will last for many years to come.

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