What to Expect from Composite Resin
When a dentist bonds the composite resin unto your tooth cavity or teeth cavities, he’s essentially applying plastic material that’s colored with the same shade as your teeth. This is to repair discolored, fractured, chipped, or decayed teeth.
It can also be used to make short teeth appear longer or serve as a more cosmetic and safer type of filling when compared to the gray coloration of amalgam fillings.
A Cosmetic Technique Ultimately: Although composite resin serves a function in keeping your cavity-ridden teeth whole until you’re in need of a dental crown, it’s ultimately a cosmetic technique that allows your teeth to get fixed without making it obvious to the naked eye that the teeth needed fixing.
It’s molded unto the teeth, usually the front ones, to give the appearance of a straighter and at times wider smile while sacrificing a little bit on toughness when compared to dental amalgam that combines mercury with other metals to form the filling. This is why amalgam is usually placed at the molars, where they’re more inconspicuous.
The Price for Composite Resin Bonding: According to Everyday Health, bonding price can range from $300 to $600 per tooth for simple procedures such as filling in cavities and what not.
Many dental insurance premiums don’t cover cosmetic bonding. Regardless, make sure to ask if it will cover a portion of the cost, particularly if it’s deemed a medical necessity. Like Fixing Roadwork with Cement versus Asphalt: The difference between composite bonding and dental amalgam is the same as with cement versus asphalt when fixing the road.
Composite resin is like filling a holey role with cement; it blends perfectly with the rest of the street as if it’s been remade from the ground up. However, even though dental amalgam, like asphalt, looks more obvious when used on a street with its darker complexion, both are tougher against the things that broke the street in the first place despite their failure to blend in.
A Solution to Various Conditions: Composite resin dental repair can be used as a functional or aesthetic form-fitting solution to various dental maladies and conditions such as staining in both teeth and previous fillings, gapped teeth, and chipped teeth.
As long as there’s still a lot of the enamel and dentin surface available, you can still drill then put in tooth-colored resin on your teeth with no problem. However, paradoxically, the more you work on the same tooth because the resin filling keeps falling off or the cavity keeps growing larger, the more ineffective the filling becomes, thus necessitating crowns and jackets.
The Benefits of Composite Resin versus All Other Restorations: Unlike porcelain veneer placement that requires you to take more than two visits to fixed chipped, holey, or fractured front teeth, a composite resin bonding procedure can be completed in one visit. Sure, you can say the same with mercury-based amalgam fillings, but those fillings are falling way out of style due to its use of mercury that’s poisonous to the body, such that there are procedures available to remove such fillings from your teeth safely in order to give it composite resin restorations instead. These fillings are also too dark colored for use on any of your front teeth like your incisors or canines.
To Whom Is Composite Bonding Right For? Not everyone is compatible with composite resin fillings or bonding. If you have a crooked smile due to an underbite or overbite, this isn’t the treatment for you. Instead, you need bite adjustment in the form of orthodontics or some other treatment that deals with any complex gaps or chips in your teeth.
The same applies to teeth cavities that are so deep that they’ve started causing toothache. Bonding is for those who seek a cosmetic solution for holey teeth that are otherwise healthy. A high level of technique is needed to make a natural shape and mold for the filling, so hire an experienced dentist to do this procedure for you. (To be continued)