Fillings are the most common dental procedure. Essentially, it is the restoration of your natural tooth by filling it with a manufactured material. Our Dentists at Boctor Dental Smilecentre are extremely experienced in all the latest dental filling technologies and techniques, ensuring quality and comfort for your Gold Coast filling. If you need a lot of fillings, we offer convenient and affordable dental payment plans.
Why do we need fillings?
You don’t remember when you were a baby, but when you were born there wasn’t any bacteria in your mouth. Unfortunately over time bacteria will eventually find its way into your mouth and once it’s there it never goes away. The bacteria will now live on your teeth for the rest of your life and whenever you eat you’ll end up feeding it.
This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing except for the fact the bacteria produces a very strong acid after it’s finished eating its meal. The small layer of acidic bacteria they leave on your teeth is commonly known as plaque and if you brush and floss your teeth regularly you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
Tooth Decay and Cavities
Occasionally the plaque will start to eat into your teeth (this is what tooth decay is) until one day you eventually end up with a hole. These holes are called cavities and once you’ve got them you’ll need to get them sorted before they cause you pain and damage. If you leave tooth decay too long it can infect the nerve of your tooth, which can be very painful. Also cavities left too long can grow so large that your tooth can practically crumble away. In order to remove the cavities you’ll need fillings in your teeth.
Just remember that Prevention is the best form of dental treatment! This is why we recommend you have a general check-up, scale and clean every six months so we can catch and prevent decay from taking hold of your tooth.
Gentle, caring Dentist for your comfort
Before your filling procedure begins, your Dentist will see that you’re comfortable, so this will usually mean getting a small injection of local anaesthetic to numb the area where the Dentist will be working. You may also be offered some topical anaesthetic rubbing gel to numb the area if you’re not fond of needles. Once the local anaesthetic is injected into your mouth it will shut of the pain receptors between the tooth and your brain, so you won’t feel any great discomfort throughout your procedure. In some cases, where there is very little drilling involved, your Dentist might recommend to do the filling without an injection. This is completely up to you, but sometimes you might be more comfortable with just a little drilling and without 3-4 hours of numbness.
Removing All Your Tooth Decay
The removal of tooth decay is the part of the filling procedure that patients seem to dislike the most, but because your mouth is numb you shouldn’t feel any pain. To begin with,your dentist will use a high-speed dental drill that will glide through the tooth decay, scraping out as much of it as possible. The drill also sprays out water, so the dental assistant will be on hand with a suction device to dry your mouth out.
After they’ve finished with the high-speed dental drill they’ll move onto a slow-speed drill, which is when you’ll usually feel a soft grinding sensation in your mouth – it can often feel a little bumpy. This second drill is simply to get out any remaining tooth decay. Sometimes they might even move onto using individual hand tools to scrape out every last piece of decay if they deem it necessary.
Getting Your Filling
In most instances, your filling at Boctor Dental Smilecentre will be a composite resin filling.We only use white filling materials to ensure yours is a tooth coloured filling. Your Dentist will apply a little acid onto your tooth before washing it away. This is called ‘etching’, which exposes the microscopic pores in your tooth. They’ll then apply a bonding agent to the tooth using a brush. These are used so your composite resin filling bonds to the tooth properly and it doesn’t fall out.
After selecting the correct shade of composite filling, your Dentist will place it into the tooth and they’ll use a bright blue light to strengthen and harden it. When they’ve made sure everything is hardened, you’ll bite down on carbon paper to make sure the filling is sitting correctly in your bite. Your Dentist will have to use the high and slow speed drills again to shape and smooth your new filling.
Getting a filling is actually one of the easiest dental procedures in the world. Even still, you might feel a little (or very!) nervous about needing to have a filling done, but our dentists are all kind, caring and gentle dentists who aim to put you at ease and make your dental fillings as comfortable as possible. Boctor Dental Smilecentre promises you the highest quality white fillings, dentists (Gold Coast or elsewhere) can offer:
Bundall (07) 5592 1999
Currumbin (07) 5598 5666.
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