I was biting into something hard and all of the sudden I had a small piece of tooth in my hand. By feeling around in my mouth, I could tell that it was the back molar on the left-hand side. I was afraid that it was an implant and so I immediately made an appointment to check it out. Dr. Alejandro Barron at Dental Studio by Pedro Ortiz quickly took an Xray of the teeth and gave me the good and bad news. The good news was that it was not an implant. The bad news was it was a crown on the back molar. Luckily, the Xray confirmed that this tooth had a root canal and so I was in no pain.

I made an appointment to come back and have Dr. Pedro replace the crown when he returned from a trip. When I was seated in the chair, Dr. Pedro took a look and the tooth and said the first step was to remove the remainder of the crown by grinding it down. No anesthetic was required because of the root canal. I never failed to be amazed by the technology advances that have occurred in dentistry. After removing the remnants of the crown, a blue laser wand was used to take a full impression of the tooth. This impression then was brought up on a screen behind the chair and Dr. Pedro manipulated the screen to finish the design of the crown. This information was then sent to the 3-D printer in another room for the crown to be cut. Dr. Pedro said that this would take about 15 minutes. He selected the block to match the color of my teeth and it was placed in the 3-D printer. I went to watch the crown actually being cut and shaped in real time.