A crown has come off: what it costs to have it put back, and why we will not tell you how to glue it

If something is swollen, if you have a fever, if bleeding will not stop, or if it is becoming hard to swallow or breathe, stop reading and contact a dentist or urgent care now. Those are not crown problems and this page is not about them.

For the ordinary case — a crown that has simply come away, leaving a smaller tooth underneath and an object in your hand — the first useful fact is the price. Putting a crown back on is one of the cheapest lines in restorative dentistry. The three published schedules read for this site allow $25.00 in Pennsylvania, $32.00 in Washington and $59.28 in Montana for re-cementing a crown.

Set that against what the same documents allow for a new crown — $500.00, $790.40 and $1,028.00 for an all-ceramic one — and the shape of the situation is clear. A crown that comes off intact and goes back on is a very small event financially. A crown that is lost, damaged or put back wrongly can turn into the large one.

Why there is no DIY section on this page

"Dental glue for crowns" is one of the most searched phrases in this whole subject, and Cap & Span is not going to serve it with instructions. That is a deliberate refusal, published on our page about how we are paid, and it covers products as well as advice: no link here to any cement, kit or repair product, at any commission.

The reasoning is not squeamishness. A crown seats onto a prepared tooth in exactly one position, and the fit is the thing that keeps saliva and bacteria out of the tooth underneath. A crown cemented slightly proud changes how your teeth meet. A crown cemented onto a surface that has not been cleaned properly seals whatever is on it in place. And a crown fixed with something not intended to be removed can stop a dentist getting it off again without cutting it apart. None of that is a risk a dentist can undo for $25.00.

There is a second, quieter reason. A crown that comes off has a cause, and the cause is underneath it. Only an examination establishes what that is. Putting the cap back without anyone looking at the tooth solves the visible half of the problem and hides the other half.

What is reasonable to do while you wait

Practical, non-clinical things, and nothing that involves putting anything into the tooth:

1. Keep the crown. Put it somewhere it will not be thrown away or swallowed, and take it to the appointment. Whether it can be reused is the dentist's call, and they cannot make it if the crown is in a bin.
2. Phone the practice and say the crown has come off. That sentence gets a different answer from "I have toothache", and practices do keep time for it.
3. Tell them whether the tooth is sensitive, whether anything hurts, and whether any part of the tooth came away with the crown. That last detail changes what appointment you need.
4. Ask, on the phone, whether they expect to re-cement or to remake, and what each would cost. The gap between those two answers is the largest in this subject and you are entitled to know which one you are being booked for.

Bridges come off too, and cost a little more to put back

The same event happens to bridges and the same logic applies, at slightly higher published fees: re-cementing a bridge is allowed $30.00 in Pennsylvania, $54.00 in Washington and $79.04 in Montana. Pennsylvania allows it up to four times in 365 days, which is a striking detail — the programme that will not fund making a bridge at all will fund putting one back four times a year.

A loose bridge is more urgent than a loose crown in one respect: it is attached to two teeth, and if it is only partly detached, one of those teeth may be sealed under a cap that is no longer sealing. That is another reason the answer is a phone call rather than a tube. What the whole structure costs, if it does need remaking, is on the dental bridge cost page.

When it cannot simply go back

Sometimes the crown is fine and the tooth underneath is not, and the plan becomes rebuilding before re-fitting. The schedules price that work separately, exactly as they do for a first-time crown: building the tooth back up is allowed $158.08 in Montana and $200.00 in Washington, with no such line in Pennsylvania, and a ready-made post and core is $80.00, $197.60 and $259.00. Those lines appearing on a re-cementing plan is not padding — it is the schedule's own structure.

And sometimes the crown itself is the problem rather than the cement: all three schedules carry a separate line for repairing a crown in the mouth when its material has failed, allowed $42.00, $162.03 and $200.00. If a new crown is proposed instead, the crown types and cost page sets out what each kind is allowed and what else gets billed alongside it.

The asymmetry in the repair lines

One detail in these schedules is worth dwelling on. Pennsylvania's programme will not fund making a new bridge at all — its entire fixed section is a re-cementing line and a repair line — yet it funds re-cementing an existing one up to four times in a year. Montana's bridge re-cementing line is capped at age 20, like the rest of its bridge work, so an adult there has no funded route even to having one put back. Whatever these documents say about making restorations, they say something quite different about keeping the ones people already have.

That is worth knowing if you are weighing whether to phone at all. In two of the three programmes read here, putting something back is treated as more fundable than replacing it, and in all three it is by far the smaller number. Delay tends to move a case from the first category into the second.