While there are several different types of dental crowns you can get, they can all be relatively costly. You can expect to pay up to $3,000 for one single crown; however, some may be even more than this. Because the costs are high, you may be interested in finding an alternative way to fix a tooth that needs a crown. While choosing a crown is the best option, your dentist might be able to offer you a temporary method for fixing the tooth, and the methods available would be more affordable. Here are two of the options your dentist might suggest using to temporarily fix your tooth.

Get a Filling Instead

When a tooth needs a dental crown, it is often because there is not a lot of tooth left. This particular tooth may have had several cavities on it over the years. Each time a dentist fills a cavity, he or she must remove a portion of the tooth to remove the decay that is present. Teeth that have gone through several fillings are not as strong as teeth that have not had decay, and this is one of the reasons dentists recommend crowns for teeth that are in this situation.

If you have a tooth like this and develop another cavity on it, placing a crown over it is the best permanent option for fixing the tooth. To do this, the dentist would have to remove all the decay and existing fillings from the tooth, and he or she would then make a crown for a tooth. If you cannot afford a crown right now, you could talk to the dentist about using a filling instead of a crown.

Filling the additional cavity would also require removing the decay from the tooth. After that, the dentist would simply insert another filling. This can be a good temporary fix for the problem, but it would not permanently solve the issue.

The downside to placing another filling in a tooth like this is that the dentist will not be certain how long the filling will last. Fillings do not offer a lot of strength for a tooth, and multiple fillings offer even less. Depending on the condition of your tooth, using a temporary filling may delay needing a crown for a few weeks or a few months, but this is not something a dentist can predict.

Use a Temporary Crown

If you cannot afford the cost of a crown right now, you may want to ask if you could get a temporary crown now and a permanent one at some point in the future. If the dentist agrees to this, your cost will be less. A temporary crown is a crown that is placed on a tooth immediately after the dentist prepares the tooth for a crown, and most dentists are able to make temporary crowns in their offices. Permanent crowns, on the other hand, are typically made of stronger material and are often made in a dental lab.

Temporary crowns are not designed to be permanent solutions for teeth that need caps, but they can last up to one year in some cases. Getting a temporary crown could give you some extra time to come up with the rest of the money needed to complete the procedure.

There are alternative ways to fix teeth that need crowns, but neither of these options offers permanent solutions. Getting a crown is the best way to fix a tooth that needs one for any reason. If you would like to learn more about the cost of dental crowns and the alternatives, make an appointment with a dentist like Kyle J Frisinger DMD today.