RESTORATIVE DENTISTRY

Dental treatments to prevent and reconstruct hard dental tissues

The restorative (conservative) dentistry deals with all general procedures to prevent and reconstruct the hard dental tissues by direct dental restoration or dental filling. The advantage of direct restorations is that they usually set quickly and can be placed in a single procedure. Restoring a tooth to good form and function requires two steps; preparing the tooth with special high-speed burrs and placement of restorative material.

There are few factors that contribute the tooth deteoration. The structural loss typically results from caries (decay), which has to be removed as well as portions of the tooth that are structurally unsound. Other factors are tooth trauma, excesive or improper toothbrush cleaning (overly vigorous or incorrectly performed brushing may cause damage of tooth tissues) and teeth consumation (bruxism, hard food).

Different dental materials have been used to reconstruct the missing tooth structure. Until recently, amalgam was the dental restorative material of choice, but because of toxicity and non-esthetic appearance its popularity has diminished. In the last few years a dental composite resins material has been used. The main advantage of over traditional materials such as amalgam is improved aesthetics, the filling of the almost indentical colour as tooth itself. Composites can be modeled easily and they polymerize and harden into the solid filling in few second by polymerization lamp.