Examination at a dentist/ShutterStock
Over the years and due to caries that damage the teeth, we occasionally need to restore the tooth (filling) to remove the decay that damaged it and replace the missing tooth material with a filling material.
If once those fillings were made of gold or silver metal, today you can use tooth-colored fillings.
The world of dentistry is advancing rapidly with the rest of the medical world, and today offers efficient and aesthetic solutions.
Over the years, dentists have gone through a process of using different materials to restore the tooth: it started with gold, from there to amalgam, to composite resin and today we have moved to ceramic materials produced in the laboratory.
A modern solution for those for whom the aesthetics, also of the back parts of the mouth, are important.
Why do you need a seal?
Of course, not everyone will need a tooth filling, holes in the teeth as we know from a young age, often occur because of tooth decay.
The caries, on the tip of the fork, is actually an accumulation of bacteria that feed on the remains of our food and create an acid that dissolves the tooth.
The more sugary and stickier the food, the longer it will be in contact with the bacteria and thus the caries will progress faster.
The better we brush and remove food residues and bacteria and use fluoride, the more we can stop tooth decay and even prevent it altogether.
Caries that has progressed and caused damage to the tooth (part of the tooth material has completely rotted, so all the damaged parts of the tooth need to be removed) requires us to perform a reconstruction of the missing part of the tooth, most people know this procedure as "filling".
If we do not carry out the treatment, the decay will continue and progress to the pulp of the tooth and the bacterial inflammation together with the strong pain will require a root canal treatment - the removal of the tissue and the sealing of the contaminated root canals.
You don't have to settle for visible shutters/ShutterStock
100 years of sealing history
Documentation for performing a restoration on a tooth after removing the damaged part goes back about 100 years.
Initially, they used to perform the restoration with gold created to fill the cavity
, the filling of the cavity with gold, either created in the clinic itself, or as a creation in the laboratory and then "glued" to the tooth in the clinic.
Later, they developed the dental amalgam
, which is an alloy of metals that, when mixed with mercury, undergoes a suitable change: at the beginning of the process, it is plastic and within an hour it hardens into one lump (therefore, after using the amalgam, the patient is asked not to eat for an hour).
Of course the silver amalgam and the yellow gold are both not very aesthetic.
Sometimes, a large part of the tooth is missing and it was necessary to prevent a fracture of the tooth walls which have become extremely thin.
This is how the concept of "3/4 crown" was created
where the outer wall of the tooth remains intact for aesthetic purposes and the rest of the tooth is restored with gold created in the laboratory and glued to the tooth, or an amalgam crown where most of the tooth, including the chewing edge of the tooth walls, is restored with amalgam.
The composite resin -
in the sixties of the last century, they began to develop a tooth-colored material that provides a solution for a more aesthetic restoration for patients, but its cost was relatively high.
It came into more massive use in the late 1980s.
Little by little the composite resin, or in its foreign name "composite", replaced the amalgam, and as the material and its properties improved over the years, more and more restorations are made with tooth-colored composite resin.
An excellent and aesthetic solution
Nowadays, a crown and filling are also used
to obtain a restoration with a high level of aesthetics and in the process to protect weak walls of the remaining tooth after the decay has been removed.
A filling is a "filling" - a restoration that is performed in a laboratory with high quality and aesthetics and is glued to the tooth.
The advantage of the filling is the level of aesthetics, the level of precision and resistance to oral forces while protecting the remaining walls of the tooth without the need for a full crown and sometimes root canal treatment which is required as a basis for a crown.
The filling can be made of a ceramic material that is very durable, and it is performed in a laboratory with precise digital engraving using a material specially chosen in terms of durability and color.
Another option is to fill with a composite resin that goes through processes in the laboratory to increase its resistance to erosion.
Therefore, if the visibility of the mouth and teeth is also important to you, as well as in the back of the mouth, fillings are an excellent and aesthetic solution.
Dr. Hagai Slutsky is an expert in public dentistry, chief dentist at Smile and a senior lecturer in the Department of Oral Rehabilitation at the School of Dentistry, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University
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