White fillings are made from tooth coloured resin that allows us to place them in areas of your smile where they have to match seamlessly. At the Linden Tree Dental Lounge, we strive to support our patients to avoid decay wherever possible. This involves our dentist and hygienist giving lifestyle, dietary and fluoride advice and help patients to adopt beneficial oral hygiene habits. Sometimes, however, we need to treat dental decay and at that time we would like to assure that your teeth are brought back to normal function and natural great looks.
Our patients and their smiles are very important to us, and therefore we will only use the most advanced white resin or ceramic filling materials along with the best dental techniques.
White fillings are now increasingly used over amalgam for mainly small to medium sized cavities as patients become more conscious of their great aesthetics. Unlike amalgam, they can be used not only to fill teeth, but also to change and improve your smile by changing the colour of your teeth or by altering their shape.
In comparison, the tint of metal of amalgam is frequently visible through the tooth structure that surrounds it and can stain the inside of the tooth permanently. Added to that, patients and dentists are becoming increasingly more aware of the implications of placing mercury in the mouth, although the risks to health are small.
Amalgam fillings can be very detrimental for the strength of your teeth. They do not ‘bind’ actively to the patient’s tooth and need to be pressed into undercuts. This means the dentist frequently has to take more healthy tooth away just to secure the filling. As teeth are made from a good amount of glass, these metal fillings can lead to deep fracture lines, broken cusps, and then larger fillings or crowns.
Making a positive difference, white fillings bind to teeth via a special ‘glue’ and can be safely placed in even shallow areas without extra tooth loss. In larger cavities they strengthen, rather than weaken, the tooth.
Should a cavity exceed the size suitable for a resin white filling, we can move on to a porcelain insert, a so-called inlay, made by our Master Technician.