A recent question I had from a visitor to the website about a crown that felt funny caused me to reflect on my own experience with this sensation a couple of years ago.
I had a crown that came off and my dentist at the time, rather than try to re-cement it, wanted to make a new crown. I was uncertain that was the right thing to do, but didn’t say anything, and went ahead and got the new crown. After I got it, the bite never felt quite right. It wasn’t painful—just a very slight feeling on it. A crown, if it is done right, should not be noticeable or feel any different when you tap your teeth together or chew. Anyway, I switched to another dentist shortly after this and he made some fine tune adjustments to the bite, but there was still a vague slight discomfort when I chewed on it.
After some time passed and this feeling persisted, I showed up again at my new dentist for a scheduled cleaning and asked the hygienist to take a periapical x-ray of this tooth to see if we could see anything that didn’t look right. To my grave dismay, the x-ray showed that the tooth under my crown was maybe half eaten away with decay. The tooth had a root canal treatment, so there wouldn’t be any toothache to warn me of the deep decay. The only symptom was this vague feeling I kept having.
The fix for the problem was to have what was left of the tooth extracted, a dental implant placed, and a new crown on the implant. Everything feels fine now. The take-away lesson is to pay attention to a new crown that just feels funny. It should blend in with the other teeth and the bite should be completely comfortable. If it’s not, it needs to be adjusted or fixed or re-done to make it right.
– Dr. Hall
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About David A. Hall
Dr. David A. Hall was one of the first 40 accredited cosmetic dentists in the world. He practiced cosmetic dentistry in Iowa, and in 1990 earned his accreditation with the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. He is now president of Infinity Dental Web, a company in Mesa, Arizona that does advanced internet marketing for dentists.
This has happened to me before! The crown was redone and finally the “funny” feeling improved.
I have a question. When the dentist replaced the crown should he have noticed the decay on the underlying tooth?
– Annmarie
Response by Dr. Hall: I think it’s highly unlikely that there was decay at the time the crown was replaced. That will rarely happen with a well-fitting crown when there is good patient hygiene. What I’m guessing happened was that there was some opening left by the new crown that let decay get in.