Crowns and Bridges and Veneers – why are they so expensive?

“Recently there have been moves by some large dental labs to take over or squeeze out the small independent labs. This is bad for them, but also for you, the patient.

Why? You may ask.

Well, in my experience both myself as clinician, and you as patient benefit from a close relationship with the dental technician, ensuring the best possible service and result. This does come at a price, but I sincerely believe it is one worth paying.

At Durham City Smiles we get our lab work made by Opus Dental Lab, housed with us at Crossgate Centre, and this gives us even more scope to provide a better product and service than some others. And Eddie Lowerson is the best ceramist I’ve worked with in the last 25 years. If you pay peanuts………..!!!

What are your crowns or bridges being made of? Have you ever asked your dentist? You should be made aware of exactly what material is being used in your mouth, many crowns and bridges are made with a metal substructure and an outer porcelain layer fused to this. It is a fact that up to 20% of patients (especially ladies) can show signs of allergy to the alloy used, depending on its constituent metals. This can manifest itself as a dark line around the crown margin, or as a reddening of the gum tissue in contact with sais margin. There are different types of alloy available, and if we use metal here at Durham City Smiles (very rarely nowadays) it is certificated 96.6% Gold/Palladium alloy- the best, and most biocompatible alloy available.

What is in your crown? Sometimes it can be “precious metal” alloy, with approximately 40% gold and other metals, which may include nickel, a major source of allergy problem. Some practices even use “Non precious metal” alloy – you can draw your own conclusions there!

It is my belief that with the modern materials now available to us, such as Emax pressable ceramics and Zirconia substructures to replace the metal ones, there is no place in modern dentistry for bonded metal/porcelain crowns or bridges. Fortunately this is a view shared and expressed recently by some of the senior academic members of our profession, with far more “clout” than little old me!

Unfortunately there is a cost to these newer, better materials, but the differential is shrinking, because as the world economy has been in decline recently, gold prices have rocketed, along with other metals such as Palladium and Platinum, this has led to a rise in prices of even the non precious metal alloys, as they do have some gold in them, but not a lot.

The metal free restorations we provide to our patients give better aesthetics, and are more biocompatible than their metal based counterparts. And I believe they are stronger, which is why I give a 6 year warranty on all my metal free ceramics, whereas the warranty on metal bonded work is 12 months.

So there it is in a nutshell. Our crown and bridge work may be seen as expensive by some, but they are almost certainly not comparing like with like. I make no apology for the prices we charge as I feel they are a fair price for a superior product. Judging by how busy we’ve been recently, many patients agree with me. I put this on our site purely for your information. If you are not one of our patients, and just looking, ask the questions of your own dentist, most will be happy to tell you what is going into your mouth, and you have the right to know. If they can’t (or won’t) tell you – don’t have it done!”