White vs Silver Fillings
This article, courtesy of Temecula dentist Dr Skidmore, helps to explain the difference between white and silver fillings.
White fillings are a composite resin material that mimics natural tooth. Silver fillings are a blend of metals including mercury, silver, gold etc. Tooth colored fillings allow the cosmetic dentist to be more conservative and remove less tooth structure. They are also bonded into place. Silver or amalgam fillings are more aggressive and expand overtime often resulting on cracks or fractures.
The type of tooth colored filling that your doctor will recommend for you depends on the condition of the tooth, the location of the tooth and the chewing forces on the tooth that needs to be restored.
Don’t settle for nineteenth century technology that looks dark gray and contains mercury and other heavy metals when today’s technology allows you to have tooth colored fillings that are almost undetectable says a cosmetic dentist. Tooth colored fillings not only match your natural tooth color more closely than the old silver fillings they also match your tooth’s translucency, the amount of light passing through the tooth rather than reflected back off the tooth surface, than the old silver fillings.
The direct tooth colored filling is done entirely in the patient’s mouth. The Temecula dentist or cosmetic dentist will sometimes isolate the tooth with a rubber dam, prepare the tooth with the drill, etch the tooth, and place a bonding agent, light cure the bonding agent then place the restorative material. The tooth colored filling material can either be self-curing or light cured by the Temecula dentist or cosmetic dentist.
The light cured tooth colored filling material is built up in small increments to form the shape and contours of your tooth and a variety of colors and translucencies can be employed to achieve the most cosmetic match possible. The self-curing tooth colored filling material is bulk placed and therefore is monochromatic and has only a single translucency. Direct tooth colored fillings are the weakest type of tooth colored fillings and should only be used in small to medium size restorations that do not involve cusps (the pointed aspect of back teeth).
When more strength and or greater cosmetic dentist qualities are needed then indirect tooth colored fillings can be used to restore the tooth. These include inlays, onlays, crowns, fixed bridges and implants.
These types of tooth colored restorations require multiple visits to your doctor’s office and are fabricated in a dental laboratory. At the first visit your Temecula or Murrieta dentist will isolate the tooth with a rubber dam, prepare the tooth by drilling, take an impression of the prepared tooth and place a temporary tooth colored filling in your prepared tooth. The laboratory will make a stone model of your prepared tooth and then fabricate a customized tooth colored restoration.
Today there are a number of porcelains and other glass like materials that match the color, translucency, hardness and strength of natural tooth structure incredibly well and are improving all the time by a cosmetic dentist. At the second visit the doctor will place the laboratory-fabricated tooth colored restoration in place by either cementing it or bonding it to the prepared tooth. Your bite will be checked and any minor adjustments made so that you are as comfortable as if it was your own tooth.
Some Dentists in Temecula only place silver fillings, be sure you find a good cosmetic dentist with experience placing tooth colored fillings. Tooth colored fillings are a big part of cosmetic dentistry today and enable the cosmetic dentist aspect of your smile to be maintained or even enhanced while re-establishing your tooth’s form and function. In no past era has the cosmetic dentist component of someone’s smile been able to be enhanced as today and incorporated into total facial makeovers to give the patient the ultimate appearance they desire. Don’t be left behind looking like a metal mouth call your Temecula cosmetic dentist today.
