What is a dental restoration?

When we talk about dental restorations, most people have no idea what we are talking about. Dental restorations are just a dentist’s way of referring to a number of treatments that we offer to make your teeth whole. If we bring up the topic of a cavity filling or dental crowns, most patients will only have a vague idea of what we mean.

Yet both of these are part of what we do when you get a dental restoration. When parts of your child’s teeth are missing, they are going to need a restoration. This includes fractured teeth, teeth that have a cavity, or the deterioration of previous restorations. There are a couple of methods for restorations that we have available. The first available restoration is direct restorations and the second is indirect restorations.

Types of dental restorations

We place direct dental restorations that we can complete in one office visit. Thus, direct dental restorations are the more common type of restoration. In fact, most children know about cavities that need a filling without ever knowing that they are taking part in a direct dental restoration. The other kind of dental restoration that we offer are indirect restorations.

We have professionals customize indirect restorations for patients in a lab. Indirect dental restorations cannot be complete in a single office visit and often require more than two visits. The first visit is to measure and find out exactly what the patient needs when it comes to a restoration. Once we have the measurements, we send them out to the laboratory so that they can make the crowns, inlays, or onlays. Once the restoration is back in the dentist office, we will custom fit it to the patient’s teeth.

When you bring your child in to Urbana Family Dental Care for a dental restoration, you are probably coming in for one of the more common restorations which include:

Common Dental Restoration Procedures

Fillings:

These fillings consist of silver amalgam, gold, or a composite resin, which is the most natural-looking. We use fillings to fill cavities after removing decay in the teeth. Fillings are a common treatment for children and we normally use tooth-colored fillings so that their teeth look natural and like there never was an issue.

Crowns:

Crowns are also known as dental caps. We use them when the teeth are damaged, cracked, or chipped to protect what remains of the tooth and to reinforce it. Sometimes we can use dental crowns to provide the chewing surface for a newly placed dental crown.

Dental bonding:

Dental bonding is an ideal solution for children because it is non-invasive and will only take one visit to our dental office. The bonding material is tooth-colored and this procedure will feel comfortable. It is not as strong as a crown, but it is long-lasting and will work well until they get older.

Dentures:

One of the most common dental restorations, especially for our older patients, are dentures which are a completely removable prosthetic used to replace lost teeth. Complete dentures replace all your teeth while partial dentures are used to cover some of the remaining teeth. The decision of whether or not to replace a permanent tooth in a child is personal and we will help to walk you through all of your options.