Featuring Dr. Ed Lowe, DMD

Duration: 1 minute, 8 seconds

Inlays and onlays and crowns are made when there's a good portion of your tooth missing from decay.

An inlay is something that fits in the tooth, where maybe it's a little larger than your regular filling. An onlay is something that will cover half the tooth or a portion of the tooth but not all the way down to the bottom of it. And a crown is like a top hat, it covers everything, all the way down to the gumline.

And that's the difference between the three different types of restorations that you would hear people talking about. Inlays, onlays and crowns are all done at the dental office.

And the dentist after completing it takes an impression, sends it to the lab. The lab sends you something back, it could either be made of gold, or made of porcelain, or sometimes a combination of gold with porcelain on top and that's called a porcelain fused to metal crown.

Tip of the day – make sure you go to your dentist to discuss the type of inlay, onlay or crown and the materials that suit your particular situation.

Presenter: Dr. Ed Lowe, General Dentist, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: General Dentist