Same-day crowns and bonded onlays in SE Portland. One single appointment start to finish — no temporary crowns to fiddle with, no second round of numbing, no two weeks of worry and discomfort, no weekend emergency re-cementing the temporary crown, and no scrambling around your schedule to fit a second dentist appointment.
Call Us at (503) 777-2284 to get started.
Single Visit Crowns
It used to take two appointments, two or three weeks apart, both during working hours to get a crown done. Dealing with a temporary that you cannot floss properly and have to chew around, having to get numbed twice.
Now We do it in one visit.
You leave our office with the finished ceramic restoration on the first appointment! We invested in a cutting-edge milling machine Fastmill IO from the world’s biggest dental laboratory: Glidewell Dental Lab, to deliver a final restoration with the same precision on that first appointment. One appointment, one time numbing, no temporaries falling out, and nothing to be careful of.
You may not even need a crown
If another dentist has told you that you need a crown, it is worth knowing that a crown is not always the only option. Crowning a tooth means grinding it down on every side, removing a substantial amount of healthy structure that does not grow back.
It is highly standardized, and is the procedure most dentists received the most training on and experience with, and is the procedure insurance pays the most for. Those reason make a crown the default.
But often, a crown is not clinically necessary. When enough sound tooth remains, a bonded ceramic onlay restores the damaged part and leaves the rest of the tooth intact.
It is more technically demanding and it takes intentional training and practice, but it is usually the better long-term decision for the tooth simply because we allow more natural enamel to remain.
So we do not promise you a crown before we have looked at it, but we can promise a finished, permanent ceramic restoration in a single visit and an honest conversation about whether that restoration should be a full crown or something that keeps more of your own tooth.
Call us at (503) 777-2284 to schedule an appointment to find out.
What the visit looks like
- Examination and imaging How much of the tooth is sound, how deep the damage goes, and whether the nerve is involved.
- The conversation What we found, what your options are, what each costs, and what we would recommend and why — before anything starts.
- Preparation and scanning We shape the tooth to receive the restoration. We don’t do a one size fits all preparation to reduce your tooth into a stump, instead reduce only where absolutely necessary. Digital scan to record the preparations. No goop, ever.
- Fabrication Designed on dedicated software, Milled and furnaced in about 40 minutes. Have a beverage and hang out in the office during this time. Catch up on emails.
- Fit, adjust, bond. Adhesive cementation for strong bonding. You leave with the final restoration in place.
What it costs
We do NOT charge a premium for the convenience of finishing everything in one visit. Some practices treat same-day as a convenience upgrade and price it accordingly — we don’t. You are paying for the restoration, not for the schedule.
It is also not only a convenience. Finishing up in one appointment means there is no temporary: nothing to come loose over a weekend, and no three-week gap where bacteria can work their way underneath while you wait for the lab. Less sensitivity. Less complications.
Call us at (503) 777-2284 to schedule an appointment to find out the difference.
Questions patients ask
Another dentist told me I need a crown. Can you just do it?
Absolutely. If I assess the situation and feel a crown is the best course of treatment, we will absolutely get the crown done. If I feel like an onlay is best for you, but you still feel like you’d like a crown after I explain the benefits, we can still do a crown.
Is a same-day restoration as good as a lab-made one?
Functionally, the answer is a resounding yes. Same material, same manufacturing process, same everything. Our same-day restoration will serve you just as well, if not better than one made in a lab.
How long will it last?
In general, the expectation is that these type of ceramic restorations should last over a decade. This is dependent on specific factor such as overall dental health, bite force, oral hygiene, etc.
How much time do I need to take off work?
In the vast majority of cases, 2.5 hours is all you need for a single tooth from start to finish.
When is Same Day Restorations NOT a good idea?
There’s nothing in the world that is the best in every situation. Here are some situations where I will not recommend same day restorations for:
Single front and center tooth
Aesthetically, teeth have a multitude of shades and translucencies. Milled ceramics are monolithic and cannot replicate the subtleties and nuances of real teeth like hand crafted porcelain can. Skilled ceramist are true artisans and will not be replaced by machines.
More than 2 restorations
In-office milling machine like the Fastmill from Glidewell Dental Laboratory or the CEREC from Dentsply Sirona are optimized for rapid fabrication of a single restoration at a time. What this means is that the time it takes to mill additional crowns increases linearly. What I’ve found is 2 crowns is typically the limit of what patients are willing to tolerate (~3 hours appointment time.) Each additional crown will add another hour to the appointment, it just gets to be too much.
Bridges
For the same reason above. A bridge is essentially a connected variant of 3 total crowns. You will be waiting about 90+ minutes for the restoration to finish milling, add in the preparation time and cementation time, you’re looking at a 4 hour appointment. Trust me, you’d rather come back another day.
Implant Crowns
Implant crowns are even worse than with a bridge for in office milling. Done conventionally, an implant crown takes two appointments of about twenty minutes each, a few weeks apart. Milling one in-house means a minimum of forty minutes of sitting in the chair waiting for the restoration alone. You would spend longer in a single appointment than the two conventional visits take put together. An implant has also spent months healing before this point. Saving three weeks at the end of that changes very little.
Give us a call at (503) 777-2284 if you’d like see the convenience of in office milling for yourself!