If you have decayed, damaged, or teeth that didn’t develop correctly, then you might be the right candidate for restorative dentistry.
Restorative dentistry involves the diagnosis, management and treatment of unusual teeth development. It aims at preventing oral diseases and restoration of normal tooth functioning. If you have one or more missing teeth, you might find it difficult to eat, speak, and even be comfortable with your smile.
Read along to learn more about restorative dentistry options.
What Is Restorative Dentistry?
Any work that involves the management of oral problems to restore the normal teeth functioning or appearance of teeth is called restorative dentistry. Restorative dentistry has not been officially recognized as a dental specialty by the American Dental Association. Dentists with a general dentistry certification can perform most restorative dentistry options.
Other areas that deal with restorative dentistry are prosthodontics. Prosthodontic dental procedures in restorative dentistry include fillings, veneers, implants, bridges and dentures.
Main Restorative Dentistry Options
Now that you are aware of what restorative dentistry is let’s see the therapeutic procedures performed by an affordable dentist near you.
Dental Implants
Dental implants are exclusively used to replace missing teeth. They are of various types, from standard implants to All-on-4 implants.
All-on-4 implants are used to replace a full arch of missing tooth on your jaw. They are also used when someone wants to replace teeth in the whole mouth. They consist of 4-tooth implants that hold a complete arch of 4 false teeth.
Dental implants might be the best means to replace missing teeth, but the treatment can be very costly. For this reason, it’s good to look for an affordable dentist near you, like the Innovo Dental and Implant Studio.
Sinus Lift & Bone Graft
This procedure goes along with a dental implant. Your dentist may recommend a dental implant, but if you do not have enough jaw bone to support the implant, a bone graft may be necessary.
Sinus lifts refer to a surgical procedure performed to graft a bone onto the upper jaw. It involves the upward-lifting of the maxillary sinus membrane, thus creating space for additional bone.
Dental Crowns
Crowns are also called dental caps and involve placing an artificial tooth-shaped crown on an ailing tooth or a tooth implant. Crowns are used for the reasons below:
- Restoration of damaged or broken teeth
- Strengthening a weakened tooth
- Used when fillings cannot be used
- To improve tooth aesthetics
- After a root canal procedure to reinforce a tooth seal
Crowns come in a variety of materials, including porcelain, gold, and various metal alloys. The cost of your tooth crown depends on what material you chose. Before getting a permanent crown, you are issued a temporary crown to protect the already prepared tooth.
Dental Bridges
Bridges are used if you have one or more missing teeth that need replacement. As the name suggests, the restorative dentist in Tracy, CA, uses the prostheses to “bridge” the gap between two or more missing teeth.
Bridges are of different types, with the most common being a fixed bridge. The fixed bridge contains two artificial tooth crowns attached to either side of two artificial teeth (pontics). The artificial crowns fit over the surrounding natural teeth providing a secure fit to the artificial tooth.
A downside of this dental bridge is that the neighbouring teeth have to be filled up for the crowns to fit.
Dental Fillings
Fillings are a type of tooth restoration used to fix the damage caused by tooth decay to prolong the damaged tooth’s life. Dental fillings are so common because almost 91% of American adults have tooth cavities.
The most popular types of dental filling are amalgam fillings, which are silver in colour. However, they are controversial because they contain mercury, although experts agree that they are safe and effective for tooth restoration.
Dentures
Dentures are a tooth replacement option involving false teeth to restore two or more missing teeth and potentially a full mouth tooth loss. Full dentures help people with missing teeth get back their normal speech, eating and normal smiling. The complete set of dentures mimics your natural teeth and function just like natural teeth.
Various types of dentures include:
- Full and partial
- Fixed and removable
- Implant-supported dentures
- Acrylic, metallic and flexible material dentures.
Dentures may no be a good tooth replacement option like implants are, but they sure improve the quality of people missing many teeth in their mouth. They protect the remaining teeth from too much chewing pressure and prevent the face’s inward sagging.