Tooth Fillings and Crowns
Cracked and missing teeth detract from even the prettiest smiles. Crowns can be used to restore the natural strength and beauty of a tooth when it has cracks or large areas of decay.
Tooth-colored fillings that are designed to match the color of your teeth are called composites. Composites are a mixture of glass or quartz filler that provide good durability and resistance to fracture in small- to mid-size restorations that need to withstand moderate pressure from chewing. They are generally used on either front or back teeth.
Composites are “bonded” or adhered in a cavity. This can allow your dentist to make a more conservative repair to your tooth, meaning less tooth structure is removed when the dentist prepares the tooth. This may result in a smaller filling than that of a metal (amalgam) filling.
It generally takes longer to place a composite filling than it does for a metal filling. That’s because composite fillings require the tooth be kept clean and dry while the cavity is being filled.
Crowns and Bridges
CEREC (Chairside Economical Restoration of Esthetic Ceramics, or CEramic REConstruction) is the system we use for dental restorations. It is a method of computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing, or CAD/CDM for short, which is the latest technology in restorative dental care.
The CEREC technology allows us to construct, produce, and insert individual ceramic restorations all in a single appointment, rather than over the course of multiple appointments.
Based on images of patients’ teeth that we take from our intra-oral camera, the CEREC software is able to create a virtual tooth model. Dr. Massie uses this model to do the tooth restoration virtually. After the virtual restoration is complete, the data is then sent to a milling machine. The crown is then milled out of a color-matched ceramic block. The finishing touches are put on afterwards.