Hey everybody, I'm Dr. Jon from Boulder Canyon Dental, and I get a lot of questions about dental fillings. Today I'm going to go over some of the common questions on this topic to give you a better understanding about dental fillings.
What are dental fillings?
Dental fillings are a procedure to repair a tooth damaged by decay, trauma, or wear and tear. Dental fillings, or cavity fillings, is a procedure where we repair a damaged tooth with a filling material. This damage can come from cavities, trauma, cracks, or general wear and tear. The filling material itself is made out of a composite resin or even a hybrid dental ceramic.
When is a dental filling indicated?
A dental filling is indicated in a tooth that has minor damage. It's very important that if we are using a filling to repair a damaged tooth, we have adequate tooth structure remaining in the tooth to support the filling long term. This damage can come from a cavity, a minor crack, chip, trauma, or wear and tear. A dental filling is the equivalent of patching holes on drywall when we're kind of moving picture frames around. But if there is a larger hole or even structural issues within the framing of the drywall behind it, then a dental filling would not really be indicated. Other situations where a dental filling may not be indicated is if you have an anterior front tooth that has a chip and we've repaired it, but your forces and habits on general day-to-day use are too much and overload the bond strength. At the end of the day, natural teeth are stronger than any material that we could put in your mouth. So in cases where you do get a dental filling on a front tooth, we always want to try to be conservative, but if that tooth continues to chip or that filling is just not going to be adequate enough and not strong enough long term, then a dental crown would probably be recommended or even a dental veneer.
Another situation where tooth fillings would not be indicated is if you're in active aligner therapy such as Invisalign or Sure Smile, or if you wear an oral appliance such as a night guard for clenching, grinding, a sports appliance to protect yourself from sports trauma, or even a sleep device that holds your jaw forward at night to prevent apnea or snoring. In these cases, your anatomy has to be perfect in order to fit those tracer appliances. So if we try to sculpt the filling material as best we can, it's possible your tray either won't fit or it will create unnecessary pressure that could cause discomfort with that tooth. It's very important that if you do wear an oral appliance that you let our office know before you get a filling appointment so we can discuss other options. The other options in this case could be something called an inlay or an onlay. If we need to match your anatomy perfectly, what we can do instead of sculpting a filling is we can still prepare the tooth in the same manner, but we would have scanned your tooth digitally before we actually prepared the tooth so we could fabricate via either a mill or a 3D printer a piece of that missing tooth that's the exact shape of your old anatomy so when we glue it in, your oral appliance can still fit.
Can fillings be avoided?
Dental fillings can absolutely be avoided if you have good oral hygiene. Continue with hygiene care visits with your hygienist, use fluoride, and also wear appliances to address forces such as clenching, grinding, or load from sports injuries.
Can dentists do fillings without anesthetic?
In many cases where cavities or the damage to the tooth structure is isolated to the enamel or just barely entering that dentin where the sensitivity of your tooth is, we can perform a simple filling repair without any dental anesthetic. In most cases, if you do feel any sensation, it's a slight cold sensation at most, but most of our patients appreciate not having to have a numb lip or tongue for hours after a visit, especially with a procedure that may only take five to 10 minutes. In our office, our philosophy is being aggressively conservative. As much as that kind of sounds ridiculous or even an oxymoron, the sooner we can address the damage before it is hurting, the better. The good news is if we do start a procedure without anesthetic and it is a little bit too uncomfortable, you can stop us immediately. That pain won't continue or linger, and then we can get the tooth comfortably numb with local anesthetics. If you are anxious about getting a filling procedure done, please let us know so we can also talk about nitrous oxide or oral conscious sedation.
What are the types of dental fillings?
There are many types of dental fillings, such as toxic silver mercury fillings, composite resins, or even hybrid ceramic resins. At our office, we do not place any toxic silver or mercury fillings. We only place tooth-colored resin composite restorations. The really cool thing about dental fillings is their ability to blend in with natural teeth. In most cases, filling materials have advanced so well over the past 30 years that when we place our restoration, you can hardly tell that it's a filling versus a tooth. In most patients, they don't even notice it to the naked eye. However, in front teeth, if we do have some special character, little white patches, or even little halos of gray or anything like that, we can actually replicate that with custom stains or a layering technique if needed.
Does a filling procedure hurt? How long is the procedure?
A dental filling procedure shouldn't hurt at all. But of course, if a tooth is bothersome or symptomatic before we do the dental procedure, we definitely want to use some anesthetic. During the procedure, you shouldn't feel any discomfort while working. If you do, you just simply raise your hand or just let us know so we can get the tooth more comfortable for you.
Dental filling procedures can take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour and a half. This is dependent on the number of surfaces or even how many teeth we're addressing.
How do I care for a dental filling?
The care for a dental filling is the same as the rest of your teeth. You want to maintain good oral hygiene with brushing and flossing. Even wearing oral appliances helps protect them long-term. If you have any mild discomfort after a filling procedure is performed, it's possible that you just need a little bite adjustment or maybe our contact was just a slightly bit too tight. When you're numb, it's hard to get that feedback right in the chair, and we do our best to make things as comfortable as possible. So in the first couple of days, if it is mild discomfort to cold or even a little biting pressure, that could be a part of the normal healing process. But if it continues beyond a couple of days, the best thing to do is call our office so we can address the situation and get you back to your life with limited interruption.
I hope I've been able to answer some of your questions about dental fillings today. If you have any questions, know somebody who needs a dental filling, or you're ready to take action, please give us a call at (970) 514-0662. We're here to help.