I present you with a dental case dealing with traumatic injury causing discoloration of the teeth and how the issue was resolved. The patient has a history of trauma to her two teeth in the front.  As a result the teeth have died off and become darkly stained.  They had a root canal to prevent teeth from getting darker or infected.

Here are how the teeth looked before we started treatment.

The first step is to choose a shade or “colour” to match the crowns to.  Once we agree on a suitable colour the teeth are “prepped”.  Basically the teeth are prepped to allow an adequate amount of material for the crown.  I crown acts like a hat or jacket for the tooth.  As you can see in the photo below the teeth look like stumps when they are prepared.  I also take a shade of the prepped tooth or “stump shade”.  This is important because the porcelain is glasslike and lets light through, the final crown shade is a combination of the white crown and the yellow tooth.

Find a suitable shade for the new crown.

Take a shade of the prepared tooth (stump shade)

The crown came back too white. The lab over compensated for the dark tooth underneath.

Final crown after sending it back to the lab for re-shading.