Skip to content

Natural Looking Dental Fillings

2017 May 24
by admin

Why put up with dark coloured fillings in your teeth?

At Alexandra Dental Care, we believe in offering our local patients not only excellent restorative dental treatments, but ones that also help them to retain the natural appearance of their teeth. This not only applies to those treatments which can be considered to be solely cosmetic, such as teeth whitening for example,  but also restorative procedures which could otherwise leave patients with less than attractive teeth.

The most common procedure carried out at dental practices across the UK is the filling of a tooth, or teeth. This is the preferred restorative method for cases where small to medium parts of the teeth are decayed or damaged. For more advanced cases, dental crowns may be preferred as a stronger option.

Amalgam

Most dental cavities are filled using amalgam; a mixture of metals which includes silver, tin and mercury amongst others. Not surprisingly, this produces a dark material which, whilst offering excellent levels of strength, leaves the patient with dark tooth fillings that show when they reveal their teeth. For years, it was considered that cosmetic alternatives were not strong enough to replace this traditional material, but, over the years, alternatives have improved and now offer a strength approaching that of amalgam.

Many of our Burton dental patients now routinely opt to have their teeth filled using a white dental filling. This is created using a mixture of prepared medical glass and plastics in a resin base. This offers a very good level of strength, though for larger rear tooth cavities, other options may still be advised.

Benefits

As the white fillings are made in a shade to match your natural teeth, they are almost invisible to the naked eye and patients can feel confident when they laugh or smile, that no one will notice. In addition to this obvious benefit, this type of dental filling requires less of the natural tooth to be removed as it bonds to the tooth structure better than amalgam. This also decreases the risk of tiny gaps between the tooth and the filling, where bacteria can become trapped and further decay can occur.

White fillings will offer the patient good functionality for everyday use and look great too. Depending on the size of the filling needed, particularly with rear teeth, we may discuss other options such as a dental crown, inlays or onlays to provide you with the additional strength needed to grind and chew your food.

We can also remove existing amalgam fillings safely and replace them with white fillings if you are worried about them. If you would like to find out more about this or any of our other cosmetic treatments, please call Alexandra Dental Care today on 01283 216347.

No comments yet

Comments are closed.