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A post and core crown is a type of dental restoration required where there is an inadequate amount of sound tooth tissue remaining to retain a conventional crown. A post is cemented into a prepared root canal, which retains a core restoration, which retains the final crown.
The role of the post is firstly to retain a core restoration and crown, and secondly to redistribute stresses down onto the root, thereby reducing the risk of coronal fracture. The post does not play any role in reinforcing or supporting the tooth and can in fact make it more likely to fracture at the root.
When deciding whether or not a tooth requires a post and core crown rather than a conventional crown, the following must be established:
The benefit of placing a post into a root canal is improved retention of the crown. However, there are also disadvantages, during the preparation for the post space there is a risk of perforation, a post can also make a tooth more likely to fracture, it makes future orthograde root canal treatment much more difficult and finally it is very destructive and requires excessive removal of tooth tissue. The presence of ferrule can increase the fracture resistance of the post.