These days, thanks to a variety of options for dental restoration, you have many choices for repairing, worn, decayed, damaged or missing teeth and restoring a healthy and beautiful smile. Depending on the nature of your problem, we will perform one of two types of dental restorations:
- Direct. Direct tooth restoration involves placing a filling into a prepared tooth cavity immediately. This procedure can be done in a single office visit. We will give options from a variety of filling options based on the type and location of the filling. For example, glass ionomer cement are often used for replacements near the tooth root or other areas not subjected to heavy pressure from chewing.
- Indirect. Indirect tooth restoration involves customized tooth replacements in the form of crowns, veeners, onlays, inlays, or bridges.
- A crown covers the entire chewing surface of a tooth,
- A veneer covers the facial surface of a tooth
- An inlay lies within the cusps of the tooth
- An onlay covers and one or more cusp tip, including part of the chewing surface.
- A dental bridge replace the missing teeth by by joining an artificial tooth permanently to adjacent teeth
An indirect tooth restoration will require more than one office visit because it must be fabricated in a lab. Crowns, veneers , inlays , onlays, bridges can be made from a variety of materials. Gold is still used for some inlays, but for someone concerned about white teeth, porcelain, zirconia and tooth-colored composite resins are other options.