Dr. Catrise Austin: Okay. So the next question, Gil, is what’s better, a porcelain crown or a porcelain veneer?
And the answer is it depends on what your needs are. If you have a root canal, getting a crown is the standard of care to protect the tooth from fracturing. And when we do a crown, we actually have to trim around the circumference of the tooth and put a full covering of the tooth. That’s what a crown is.
I actually have a sample of a crown right here. So it covers the front and back of the tooth unlike a convenient veneer, which is a thin shell of porcelain that doesn’t cover the entire tooth. It just lies on the front of the tooth like a facing, like a contact lens. So it doesn’t require a lot of drilling like a crown.
So if you have a dark tooth, if you have a fractured tooth, three‑quarters of the tooth, half the tooth is gone, you want to put a crown over it to protect it. If you’re going for repairing a small chip or you have slight discolorations, you want to make your teeth look a little bit straighter without getting braces, then, most often than not, a veneer is going to be what you need.
So a crown is for extreme circumstances or we want to protect the tooth, we need to cover the tooth so when you bite, the tooth underneath can’t crack. So that is to be ‑‑ to be determined by your dentist, but those are generally the indications for crown versus a veneer.
Gil Villavacer: Exactly. And from the lab standpoint, we follow the specification of the dentist. You obviously know the treatment plan, and, for us, we have different materials based on the thicknesses, the shape and design of the crown to accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish.
Catrise Austin: Yes.