Fillings
Filling are used to prevent the spread of tooth decay or repair minor damages to your tooth. Before placement, any decay must be drilled out. We offer local anesthesia to ensure maximum comfort for our patients. There are two different types of fillings: amalgam (otherwise known as silver fillings) and composite resin, the color of which can be customized to match your natural teeth. Our clinic only uses composite resin for fillings due to concerns over the mercury content in Amalgam fillings.
Amalgam
Made up of silver, copper, mercury, and tin, amalgam fillings used to be the material of choice for patients for many many years. Despite the mercury content, these silver fillings after they are hardened are perfectly safe with very minimal amount of mercury release. People would be exposed to a lot more mercury from eating fish than from having a hardened silver filling in their mouth. Therefore, for those silver fillings that are already in your mouth, there is really no urgent need to have them removed unless they start to break down.
Composite Resin
Since the color of a composite resin filling can be customized, it is the most aesthetically pleasing option. Nowadays, research and technologies have significantly improved the strength and hardness of composite resin fillings. Hence they can predictably used for most teeth with great long lasting success. It is ideal for repairing chipped or cracked teeth, filling in a tooth gap, correcting dental discoloration, protecting any exposed tooth root from gum recession, or changing the shape of teeth. It has become a better material for cavity fillings as they are bonded to the teeth in layers and therefore require less drilling away of the natural tooth structure.