What are Restorative Procedures?
Restorative procedures are the multiple ways we replace missing teeth, or missing parts of teeth. Tooth structure can be missing due to decay, deterioration of a previously placed restoration, or fracture of a tooth.
Some Examples Of Restorative Procedures Are:
Fillings
These are the most common types of dental restorations we place. Most commonly they are tooth coloured plastic and glass material, called composite resin.
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The tooth is first cleaned of tooth decay, before being restored with resin material. It’s important for us to keep the tooth dry throughout the procedure so that the tooth coloured plastic filling sticks. An alternative to the tooth coloured plastic filling are ceramic fillings. Although more expensive, these are a longer lasting permanent alternative. Commonly placed over 2 appointments they, together with gold fillings, are the gold standard in restorative material. Ceramic fillings are also called inlays and or onlays. For more information on the pros and cons of resin vs ceramic read our blog article here.
Crowns
Crowns are tooth shaped caps that we place over a tooth, to restore shape, size, strength and appearance. Crowns are commonly required over teeth that have root canals or are heavily filled.
Local anesthetic is used for pain prevention during some restorative procedures. Local anesthetic causes a complete loss of feeling to a specific area of your mouth without making you lose consciousness.
Our Dentists will make sure that you are fully numb before starting the procedure.
Bridges
Bridges are a small number of false ceramic teeth that are designed to bridge the gap created by one or more missing teeth. They are used as an alternative to implants. A bridge is essentially made up of a number of crowns that are anchored on either side of a missing tooth with the extra missing tooth stuck to them. They are permanently cemented into place.
Implants
Implants are replacement teeth. They are made of titanium metal, that is screwed into the jaw bone where teeth are missing and are then covered with the replacement tooth called an implant crown.