30 Jul Dental Restorations in One Visit? It’s Possible!
Sarah lost an old crown two days before her daughter’s wedding. She called us expecting the usual runaround: a consultation, a temporary crown, and a two-week wait for the real thing to come back from a lab somewhere. Instead, she walked out of her appointment that same afternoon with a brand new, permanent crown in place.
If you live in Prescott, you can get same-day restorations at Hicks Dental. Here’s how we do it.
How CEREC Technology Works
CEREC machines use digital scans and advanced 3-D modeling technology to design and sculpt a custom crown while you wait.
Instead of gooey impression material, we use an intra-oral camera to scan your mouth. The resulting digital model gets sent straight to our in-office milling machine that can sculpt a block of ceramic into a custom crown in about fifteen to twenty minutes.
Skipping the third-party lab entirely is exactly how CEREC technology allows us to give you permanent restorations in a single visit.
Same-Day Crowns, Inlays, and Onlays
Crowns get most of the attention, but they’re not the only type of CEREC restoration. When teeth have damage that’s too extensive for a filling but not severe enough to need a full crown, we can use inlays or onlays to restore the tooth.
An inlay fills in the space between the cusps of a tooth, while an onlay covers one or more cusps directly. And because CEREC technology makes them a same-day procedure, getting inlays or onlays doesn’t take much longer than getting a filling.
Do Same-Day Restorations Really Last?
This is usually the first concern patients bring up, and it’s a reasonable one. Nobody wants to trade convenience for durability. A ten-year clinical study tracking CEREC restorations found a survival rate of nearly 86 percent after a full decade, which holds up well against lab-milled crowns. The materials and milling process have both improved even further since that study wrapped up, so CEREC crowns should last even longer now.
Beyond just skipping the two-week wait, same-day restorations tend to fit better since adjustments happen chairside instead of getting mailed back to a lab. There’s no awkward temporary crown falling off at the worst possible moment, either.
Same-Day Dental Restorations in Prescott, AZ
The benefits of CEREC crowns really come down to walking in with a problem and walking out with it solved.
If you’re dealing with a cracked, decayed, or damaged tooth, there’s no reason to plan your life around a weeks-long wait anymore. Same-day dental restorations mean you can walk in with a problem tooth and walk out with it fixed, all in one visit. Contact us today to make an appointment.
Photo by LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR on Unsplash with permission under the Creative Commons license for commercial use 7/27/26.