Understanding What Dental Procedures You May Need and Why
If you have a cavity in between your teeth...
We often drill the area affected by the cavity, crack, or whatever issue you have. Then, we fill it with a white filling. A white filling is mainly composed of resin and glass beads. We place it and harden it with a curing light. That's one way, or we could use an inlay. An inlay is a porcelain structure made to fit into your tooth precisely. Once it's in, that's it. A filling or the inlay is there. An inlay goes inside the tooth, while an onlay goes on the outside.
Full coverage crown
This here is called a full coverage crown, and it completely covers a tooth. On this tooth, I'm going to completely cover it. You see how that works over there? That's a full coverage crown.
An onlay
An onlay is a partial crown on top of the tooth. We shape your tooth and put a temporary or, if we have a milling machine in the dental office, you can do this the same day. This is a partial crown. (see video above) The difference is, I'm hoping you can see it clearly. This is a partial crown. It's really hard to remove, but that's basically what we do. It's a partial crown.
When you are missing a tooth...
When you are missing a tooth and want to replace it to regain function and aesthetics, we do what's called a bridge. It uses two neighboring teeth to anchor the missing tooth area. This is called a bridge. It's called a bridge because it bridges the empty space of the missing tooth.
Let's talk dental implants.
An implant is composed of three parts: the actual implant, which replaces the root of the missing tooth, and this area right here, called a custom abutment. This custom abutment takes the place of the missing tooth. Whatever you have in here that we would use in a natural tooth is now replaced by this. This is called the custom abutment. After the abutment is done, we take a crown, an implant crown, usually white, and place it on top of the tooth. That's the implant crown.
When you have crooked teeth and the bite is correct for you, because not everyone who wants veneers can have them, if your bite is really strong, you'll pop them off. This is called veneer preparation.We will shave quite a bit of the tooth structure on the surface to fit a porcelain veneer or layer on top.
On the underside of the tooth, there's an overlap. We bond it, just like with a filling or a ceramic crown. We put it in there, apply special cement, and use a light to set the bonding materials like white fillings, crowns, and porcelain veneers. That's basically it.
At Virginia H. Ellis, DDS Dental Corp., you come first. Whether you need dental care or simply have questions, call us at (925) 272-2698 or email [email protected] to schedule your visit. Our team is here to help you every step of the way.