Garak-dong Dental Clinic: Why Old Gold Crowns Should Not Be Reused, Even if They Seem Too Precious to Waste

Hello. I am Shin Seung-hwan, the chief dentist at the Garak-dong branch of Yonsei Uline Dental Clinic near Garak Market Station in Garak-dong, Songpa-gu.

When providing dental treatment, many people wonder whether an old gold crown they used before can be reused.

Especially when removing a gold restoration that has been used for a long time, I often get asked, “This seems too valuable to waste. Can’t it be melted down and used again?”

To answer first: gold crowns that have been used in the mouth are not recommended to be melted down and reused.

Many people think that if it is gold, it can simply be reused as is. However, the gold used in dentistry is not 100% pure gold.

Pure gold is too soft, so in actual clinical use it is made as an alloy mixed with various metals to secure strength.

For example, in the case of a crown that covers the entire tooth, it must maintain its shape, so the gold content is usually around 50%, and at most no more than 60%.

On the other hand, inlay treatment that fills the inner part of a tooth requires greater precision and is subject to less external force, so the gold content is applied at a higher level, around 70 to 80%. In this way, the composition and proportion of the gold are designed differently depending on the purpose.

The problem is gold crowns that have already been used in the mouth. Long-used restorations have adhesive residue and various foreign substances left on them, and as they are continuously exposed to the oral environment, the alloy itself can become subtly contaminated or change in properties.

If the gold is melted down again and remade in this state, there is a high chance that air bubbles will form during the process or that the material will not be made uniformly.

If that happens, precision decreases, and as a result, the restoration may not fit well or may have lower durability. And because these problems are difficult to correct midway, they can lead to a situation where the restoration must be remade from the beginning.

That is why, in clinical practice, reusing an already used gold crown to make a new one is not recommended.

However, there are exceptions. If a gold crown does not fit before it is fitted in the mouth and must be remade, it is possible to melt down and reuse that gold because it has not yet been used in the oral cavity.

In the end, what matters is not the material’s “price” but its “accuracy and stability.”

Rather than reusing existing gold to save on costs, making it accurately with new material from the start is, in the end, a way to use it longer and more safely. This has been Yonsei Uline Dental Clinic in Garak-dong, Songpa-gu.