Obsolete Dentistry

Obsolete: “No longer produced or used: out of date.”

Most people would agree that your smile is one of the first things other people notice about you. It is the way we connect and share ourselves with others, and the appearance of our smile affects our confidence. At Oppenheim Signature Smiles, we avoid placing metal and amalgam fillings to fix cavities. We choose to use only tooth colored materials that blend perfectly with your natural teeth.

Through advanced technologies of dental adhesion, state-of-the-art ceramics and resins, the latest bonded restorations are actually close to rivaling nature in durability, wear, performance and appearance. Using these innovative materials, it is possible to bond your teeth back together, essentially restoring them to their original toughness, but without the invasiveness of complete-coverage crowns. In most instances, metal fillings can be replaced with approaches that are known to be a better solution to mercury/silver amalgam fillings. It is, as a result, a possibility to maintain the healthy, leftover tooth structure, rather than grinding it down for a crown.

Everything wears away, and your silver fillings are no exception. They withstand tense and significant biting forces daily, and as they age, they break, leak and may also result in damaging fractures in the teeth. With time, metal amalgam fillings can actually absorb water, causing them to swell and break away from the tooth. At this point, your tooth is more prone to decay and sensitivity.

Mercury/Silver fillings share some other noted drawbacks that should be thought of when it is time to replace your restorations:

• Silver fillings are much less esthetic than natural-colored fillings. Think about it, they scream out, “I am a metal filling put here because this person did not take care of their teeth very well!”
• Amalgam grows and shrinks whenever exposed to cold and hot extremes within your mouth. The continuous growth and shrinkage with temperature may initiate cracks, as well as fractures in teeth. There might not be any indicators for a while, yet these teeth could become very sensitive as the crack expands or opens whenever you bite down or chew. It is not abnormal for patients to come in questioning the way they broke their own tooth while they had been eating something soft such as a banana or slice of bread. What they don’t realize is that the tooth probably had a crack in it long before it ultimately came apart.

• Silver fillings that are under continual chewing stress are vulnerable to metal weakness or bending and flexing failure, a concept which is often fully understood and confirmed by repeatedly bending a metal paperclip until it eventually breaks.

• Metal fillings are much harder and less flexible than the teeth into which they are wedged. The longer they are in the teeth, the more pressure they place on the remaining, weakened walls of the tooth resulting in fractures and cracks.

• Metal fillings are not cemented into the tooth cavity. They just sit in the surrounding tooth and act under pressure to wedge the tooth apart, much like a metal wedge is utilized to split logs into firewood.

• A microscopic gap surrounding the filling edge is present as soon as the silver filling is plugged into the tooth; and in this gap, continuous leakage and corrosion takes place. This unnoticeable gap is big enough to allow for bacteria and food particles to enter in with time and cause tooth decay at the crack between the tooth and the filling. Composite fillings, however, are actually glued (bonded / fused) to the tooth preparation area and seal the borders closed from invading bacteria.

• In order to get a tooth ready for a composite filling, the tooth can usually be treated considerably more gently and with less healthy tooth structure needing to be removed. Thus, the dentist can maintain the highest amount of healthy tooth structure as is feasible.

• Silver fillings call for drilling undercuts (think carving out a pumpkin) along with taking away more substantial healthy parts from the tooth so as to keep the mercury amalgam filling from falling out because it is not bonded directly to the tooth. Those undercuts also can weaken the tooth as fillings get more substantial and relegate that particular tooth to subsequent fracture down the road.

• Composites, could reinforce and protect against fracture. By intercepting the potential of fracture prior to experiencing the symptoms of hot and cold sensitivity and biting discomfort, innovative conservative solutions like natural-colored restorations or porcelain-bonded restorations are protecting against the complications of toothaches and broken teeth.

• Finally, in many dentists’ opinions, bonded natural-colored restoratives are considered safer than conventional fillings, because they do not contain any mercury. Even though the American Dental Association (ADA) declares the usage of mercury in metal fillings is safe, there is an ongoing discussion in the dental sector in regards to the side effects of these mercury amalgam fillings. Several of the European countries have prohibited the usage of mercury amalgam fillings to avoid any risks associated with mercury.

Given the laundry list of negative effects associated, and potentially associated, with silver/mercury amalgam fillings, it becomes clear why patients are asking Dr. Oppenheim to be PROACTIVE about replacement of mercury fillings rather than being REACTIVE, and electing to schedule treatment when the tooth fractures or hurts. For tooth damage that requires more than a filling, we also offer restorative options including porcelain crowns and dental onlays.