Are you experiencing a nagging toothache or a sudden pain when you try to bite on hard food? What about the tingling sensitivity when consuming hot and cold food or drink? Maybe your teeth need a filling? Perhaps you tried looking for a cavity yourself, but without training and a very good light source and mirror, it’s time to book a dental appointment with your dentist Harley Street.
The most common symptoms experienced by our patients who require a filling are all caused by an increased exposure of the nerve. How that increased exposure came to be can be quite different; tooth decay for instance causes a small local cavity which can drill deep into the tooth thereby exposing the nerve. Acid erosion is where the entire tooth is weakened equally all over eventually making the enamel thin enough for the porous dentine to be exposed and therefore the nerve.
If symptoms occur soon after some form of trauma, it’s quite possible that you have chipped or cracked a tooth. These chips and cracks, if deep enough to expose the nerve, will cause a sudden toothache similar to that of a cavity. Most chips and cracks are not resolved using fillings by our dentist Harley Street; if it is severe enough to expose the nerve it is likely that some form of crown will be required.
How we carry out the filling procedure
Depending on the nature of the filling, it may be necessary to remove small quantities of the tooth using a dental drill and if so a local anaesthetic is required. This will be administered into the gum around the tooth which is being worked on. Our dentist Harley Street will press on the gum and will ask you if you can feel anything. This is to ensure that the local anaesthetic has worked correctly, ensuring that you will not experience any discomfort during the drilling of the tooth.
After being thoroughly cleaned and drilled, the site will be filled with a filling material that will either be a metal amalgam or a composite polymer.
Metal amalgams
An amalgam filling is the standard treatment provided by the NHS. It is a hard-wearing material made from a mix of metals including silver, copper and tin. It is very tough and when applied by our dentist and with your good care, these fillings can be expected to last 10 to 30 years.
Polymer composites
Polymer composites are newer in terms of clinical use. The main advantage of composites is that our dentists will be able to colour match them to your enamel by mixing resins, followed by ‘polishing-in’ where a dental drill is used to make the transition between your natural enamel and the polymer filling indistinguishable.
These are only sometimes available as part of NHS treatment, usually if they are related to a filling at the front of the mouth. This is not because there is any doubt of their effectiveness, only that NHS treatment has to consider effectiveness vs cost-effectiveness, leaving most composite fillings available to private or medically insured patients.
We do hope that this changes in the future, as there is an attempt to phase out some of the materials used in amalgam fillings due to the environmental hazards of manufacturing them and potential issues they can cause to teeth.