Dental Crowns Turkey

Very few crowns start life as a plan. Most start as a filling. A small cavity gets filled, and years later the filling is replaced with a slightly bigger one. Then a corner of the tooth breaks off around it. Then someone mentions a crack. By the time a crown comes up in conversation, the tooth has often been patched three or four times, and there isn't a great deal of the original left.
That history matters, because the real question with a crown is rarely "which material?". It's "what's left of this tooth, and what will hold it together best?". This section works through that question the way a dentist would, from the teeth that need very little to the ones that need more than a crown can give. It's the same question whether you're having dental crowns in Turkey or closer to home, and it's the first thing our dentists in Istanbul look at when your photos arrive.

A ladder, not a single choice

It helps to think of tooth repairs as a ladder. Each step up covers more of the tooth, and each step removes a little more healthy structure to make room. The aim is to stop on the lowest rung that will actually do the job.
On the bottom rung is a filling. If most of the tooth is intact and the damage is contained, a well-placed filling is still the most conservative repair there is.
One step up is what dentists call an onlay, or a partial crown. It's a ceramic piece made in the lab that covers the biting surface and replaces one or more of the pointed corners, called cusps, without wrapping all the way round the tooth. When a back tooth has lost a cusp but its walls are otherwise sound, an onlay can protect it while keeping more of the natural tooth.
Next comes the full crown, which covers every surface. As the pathway above describes, that means taking about 1 to 1.5 mm from every wall so the crown can fit over the top without looking bulky. It's the right choice when the tooth is so broken down, heavily filled or weakened that partial coverage won't hold it together.

Why back teeth with root canals usually need crowns

A tooth that has had root canal treatment is not dead in the sense of being useless, but it has changed. The nerve and blood supply have gone, the tooth has lost the structure removed to reach the canals, and many root-filled teeth have already lost a lot of structure to decay before treatment started.
On a back tooth, that combination is risky. Molars and premolars take heavy chewing forces, and their cusps can act like wedges, splitting a weakened tooth from the top down. A crown or onlay that covers those cusps holds them together and spreads the load. That's why many dentists recommend covering a root-filled back tooth fairly soon after the root canal, rather than waiting for it to break. If a root canal is needed first, it appears as its own line in your plan, as the price section above explains.
Front teeth are different. They take less direct biting force, and a front tooth whose root canal was reached from behind, leaving the rest of it intact, may be fine with a filling, or with a veneer if its colour has changed. Not every root-filled tooth needs a crown. Every root-filled back tooth deserves a proper look.

The foundation under the crown

A crown is only as secure as what it's sitting on. When a lot of the tooth is missing, the dentist first rebuilds a solid core, usually from a strong filling material, so the crown has something of the right shape to hold on to. This is the "build-up" you may see listed separately on a quote.
In a root-filled tooth with very little left above the gum, the core sometimes needs extra anchorage from a post placed a short way into the root canal. Posts don't strengthen the tooth itself; they simply help keep the core in place. Placing one also means removing a little more from inside the root, so dentists use them only when they're genuinely needed.
The most important factor in whether a crown lasts on a badly broken tooth is something patients rarely hear about. A crown needs to grip a band of real tooth all the way round, just above the gum. Dentists sometimes call this the ferrule, borrowing the word for the metal collar at the end of a walking stick. Without that band, even a well-made crown on a well-made core is more likely to come loose or allow the root to fracture. If there isn't enough tooth above the gum to provide it, the options are to reshape the gum and bone slightly to expose more tooth, or to accept that the tooth is not a good candidate for a crown.

Cracks

Cracks send a lot of people towards crowns, and they're notoriously hard to pin down. The classic symptom is a sharp twinge when you bite on something, often felt at the moment you release rather than when you bite down. Cold can set it off too. The tooth may look perfectly normal.
If the crack runs across the crown of the tooth and stops above the gum, a crown can hold the two sides together and often settles the symptoms. If the crack runs down into the root, a crown usually can't save it, and the tooth may need to be removed. Before shaping a cracked tooth, a good dentist will want to know which kind of crack they're dealing with, sometimes by removing an old filling to look underneath first.

When there isn't enough to crown

At the top of the ladder sits the tooth that's been broken down to the gum line, split into the root or badly weakened by repeated treatment. Crowning it would mean building almost everything from scratch on a foundation that may not hold.
Sometimes the kindest thing to say is: let this one go. Take it out and replace it. For one tooth on its own, that usually means an implant with its own crown. Where the teeth either side already need crowns, a dental bridge can be another option. Neither is a failure of the crown plan. They're what the plan should recommend when a crown would be a short-term fix on a tooth that won't last.

Zirconia, E.max or porcelain: matching the crown to the tooth

Once a tooth has been judged ready for a crown, the material follows its position and its workload. You'll find the three materials above, and each one gets a page of its own.
Very roughly: molars, and anyone who grinds, tend to end up with zirconia crowns, because that's where sheer strength pays off. Front teeth, and the premolars you flash when you smile, more often get E.max crowns, because there it's how the tooth catches the light that people notice. Porcelain crowns cover a wider range of constructions, and that page explains what the word actually means on a quote. Many plans use two materials in the same mouth, and that's usually a sign the plan was made tooth by tooth.

How long do dental crowns last?

Most well-made crowns last somewhere between ten and twenty years, and where yours lands in that range depends less on the ceramic than you'd think. Ceramic can't get a cavity. The bit of tooth it's sitting on can. And ask any dentist what usually brings an old crown back into the chair, and it's rarely the crown breaking. It's decay creeping in along the join, often just under the gum, where a toothbrush struggles to reach.
Other trouble is rarer. Now and then a crown works loose, or a corner chips. Gums can shrink back until the edge peeks out. On teeth that were in poor shape to begin with, the root occasionally cracks. You usually get some warning, though: a nasty taste that keeps coming back, a rough edge your tongue won't leave alone, a sore spot at the gum, a bite that suddenly feels different. Bring it up at your next check-up. Don't wait for the crown to land in your hand.

Replacing old crowns in Istanbul

Plenty of people who ask about crowns already have some. They might be twenty years old, with a grey line showing at the gum, a slightly wrong colour, or an edge that catches floss. The grey line usually comes from an older crown with a metal inner layer, and the porcelain crowns page linked above explains why that happens.
Swapping an old crown for a new one sounds simple, and often it is. There's one catch, though. Until the old crown is off, nobody really knows what's underneath. You might find a perfectly healthy stump. You might find decay, a core that's crumbling, or a root that now needs treating. We'd rather tell you that up front, along with what the plan would look like if the tooth needs more than expected. It's one reason X-rays of existing crowns are so useful before you travel.

Dental crown prices in Turkey: reading the quote

The cost of dental crowns in Turkey is one of the main reasons people travel, and the per-tooth prices above are genuinely lower than in the UK, Germany or the US. Still, a crown price on its own tells you the cost of the ceramic cap. It doesn't tell you what the tooth needs underneath it. That's why the prices above list root canals, build-ups, extractions and temporaries as separate items.
Lay two quotes side by side and look for the same things in each: every tooth listed, a material next to it, and a note of anything that has to happen before the crown goes on. Say one quote shows three crowns and nothing else, and the other shows three crowns, two build-ups and a root canal. Either those are two very different mouths, or somebody hasn't looked closely yet.

Getting your crowns fitted in Istanbul

Most crown treatment in Istanbul fits into one trip, as shown on the page above. Between preparation and fitting you'll wear a temporary cover, and the temporary crowns page covers what that stage involves and what to do if one comes loose.
After the permanent crown goes on, a few days of twinges with cold drinks are common, especially on teeth that haven't had a root canal. What you shouldn't ignore is a crown that hits first when you close your teeth together. A high crown can make the tooth ache and puts extra strain on the ceramic, and it takes minutes to adjust. Get it checked before you fly home.

Keeping them for the long run

All the risk sits at that thin seam where crown meets tooth, so that's where your toothbrush should spend its time. Angle it into the gum line. Then get between the teeth every day, with floss if your gaps are tight or little interdental brushes if they're not. A crowned tooth that's cleaned well at the margin can last for many years.
Grind at night? Then wear the guard. It saves the crowns and the teeth next to them. Don't skip the X-rays at check-ups either: decay tucked under a crown edge tends to show up on film well before it hurts. Last point, and it catches a lot of people out. If you want whiter teeth, sort that out first; the crowns get matched to the new shade. Ceramic won't bleach, so doing it the other way round leaves the crowns looking darker than their neighbours.