Dental patients are being given another reason to smile.

New technology has patients in and out of a crown procedure in the same day.

“The trend is that people want things very quickly especially among the younger generation, millennials,” said Dr. Tina Ramirez with Dr. Ramirez Cosmetic Dentistry in Kitchener.

“We're doing it all same day, one appointment. Patient walks in with their broken down tooth and they walk out with their final crown.”

Previously, patients would have to come in for multiple appointments.

“Typically for a crown you would have to come and spend 2-3 visits to the dentist because first, they take an impression, then they send the impression to the lab, and after that you have to come back so they try the impression,” said Giovanni Cascante, a patient having the new procedure done.

“In this case it’s just all being computerized and what that basically means is I’m not relying on sending a stone model to a lab technician and I’m also not putting that horrible impression material in my patient’s mouth,” said Dr. Ramirez.

Dr. Ramirez said the new technology doesn’t cost any more than the old method, coming in around $1,000 to $1,200 per tooth.

The first step is taking a series of 3D images and building a model of the patient's mouth.

“Now I’m relying in a computer to design the crown and it can be a lot more specific,” said Dr. Ramirez. “It will take a block and it'll just drill a crown out of that little block that we put in the machine and from that we have a crown same day.”

Crown

The crown is prepared in an hour, and once the patient is in the dental chair, it takes about 20 minutes to cement – leaving the patients smiling in no time.