Are you worried about cavities ruining your smile? Once upon a time, a cavity meant having a very noticeable gold or silver filling. With natural coloured fillings, a filling is seamlessly matched to your natural tooth shade.
Let Marketplace Dentistry keep your teeth healthy and natural looking with tooth coloured fillings.
What to Expect During Your Tooth Coloured Filling
Modern improvements in dentistry have made routine fillings fast and painless. Typically, only a local anesthetic is required to numb the area right around the affected tooth.
During your filling, you can expect:
- Color Matching: color matching is most frequently done first before any other work to ensure the best possible match.
- Local Anesthetic: a shot of numbing agent is injected directly into the surrounding gum. Though you may feel a small pinch from this, the discomfort will pass quickly.
- Preparing the Tooth: once the numbing agent has taken effect, your dentist will carefully remove decay from your tooth. After removal, the area will be cleaned and dried to prepare it for the filling.
- Layering Composite Material: the composite material that makes up your tooth coloured filling is applied in layers. After each layer of material is in, a light is used to cure the surface before another layer is applied. This ensures a strong and fully dried structure for your filling.
- Shaping Your Filling: Once the final layer of composite filling is applied, your dentist will carefully shape it to form the top layer of your tooth. This will allow your tooth to look and act just as it normally would before the filling.
- Your dentist will then ensure that your bite is normal and you do not feel any discomfort or abnormalities from your restored tooth.
What are the Benefits of Tooth Coloured Fillings?
- Aesthetics: While tooth-coloured fillings have several benefits over metal fillings, their aesthetic appeal is the top reason patients choose this type of filling. Since tooth-coloured fillings can be customized to match your teeth, they can easily restore your smile without noticeable differences.
- Longevity: Fillings that are properly cared for can last for 10 years or much longer. Keeping up with regular checkups and daily oral hygiene is key to making your fillings last longer. With these measures, your fillings could even last 20 years or more.
- Fast Treatment: One or even two routine cavities can be filled in under an hour in most cases.
- No Mercury: One of the reasons that many patients opt for tooth coloured fillings is that silver fillings contain trace amounts of mercury. Though studies have shown that silver fillings pose little to no risk to patients, many gain peace of mind knowing their fillings are free of mercury.
- Improved Tooth Structure: With composite fillings, less of your natural tooth will need to be removed. This will keep the overall structure of your tooth stronger compared to a silver amalgam filling.
Schedule Your Exam and Filling Appointment Today
While hearing that you need a filling can be daunting, the procedure is actually quite simple and will save you from more extensive and costly dental work.
Let Marketplace Dentistry help you restore your teeth by making an appointment today.
