Is this the normal procedure for a new cap replacement?

Hi Susan, Your dentist was taking a mould in order to prepare a porcelain crown. This is perfectly normal procedure when preparing a crown, so you don't need to be anxious about it.

You might, however, want to be a tiny bit angry with your dentist for insisting on the more expensive option of a full crown, when the tooth could have been just as easily (and durably) repaired with a simple white resin cap at less than half the cost.

I have the same problem - the last lower molar before my wisdom tooth broke off 20 years ago. Same story - no decay. First time round, the dentist glued on a mercury amalgam cap. This lasted 10 years before it came off, taking most of the remaining above-gum tooth with it. Second time round a different dentist did the same thing, but this time using white resin filling. This one lasted about seven years before it fell off.

Three years ago, went through the same thing again with yet another dentist. Still no decay in the tooth so he said it was safe to make another ad hoc resin cap, but advised fixing it with titanium screws as well as acrylic adhesive this time, which I agreed to. The insurance covered 85% of the costs of the procedure, as before, but not the titanium screws, for which I had to fork out €55 myself - equivalent to around 40 quid in those happy days. He was so confident it would hold he even gave me a written 10-year guarantee! He had me do something none of the others had. He's a big guy with a loud voice, and as soon as he'd put the resin in place he said to bite. I obediently bit once, but he kept shouting "Bite bite bite!" making me bite rapidly non-stop for a full minute. I only realised when looking in a mirror afterwards that this had formed the resin cap into the perfect replica of a real tooth.

I didn't have to have moulds taken on any of these occasions.

I haven't had the slightest problem with any of the three, apart from the fact two of them eventually fell off, but then no form of crown or cap lasts for ever anyway. Interestingly, a friend's niece was recently on a visit from the US. She's a dental technician. When I told her about this she was scandalised, said I should absolutely have had a porcelain crown, though she agreed that 7-10 years is good going for any kind of repair on a lower molar. (But then she's from a country where dentists habitually go for the most expensive option!) She asked to look at the tooth, and absolutely insisted it was a porcelain crown and I must have forgotten I'd had moulds taken etc. I assured her it wasn't. She kept looking at it, and finally agreed it was resin, said she'd never seen such perfect work done with resin!

I suspect you're tied in financially to having a porcelain crown, having had the moulds taken, but I'd advise trying to get out of it. See if you can find a dentist who's prepared to put on another acrylic cap, preferably with titanium screws to hold it in place. It'll cost a fraction of the price of a crown, won't require any moulds and should last a long time. Not for ever, of course, but neither will a pricey porcelain crown.

Good luck!