What Is a Dental Crown?

DINA GIESLER: The best way to describe a crown is it's a cap that we put on a tooth, and it's probably the best procedure we have to save a tooth.

A patient needs a crown when the tooth has been compromised with, you know obviously, a big cavity or a root canal or a large filling that takes up more than 3/4 the size of a tooth. If you were to take out an old filling, usually there's just a shell left.

So that's a very weak substructure, so a crown is actually something that covers and protects the tooth.