Taking care of your teeth can sometimes mean needing a procedure you would otherwise prefer not to have; filling a cavity can stop the pain and prevent infection, while root canal therapy will eliminate an infection and possibly save the tooth from being extracted.
Both are important procedures that we do weekly as part of general dentistry at The Smile Place Surey. You are always in excellent hands when you visit us because your oral health and general well being are essential to us. In this article, we will explain these procedures to you so that you can better understand their importance.
Fillings
Fillings can be discovered in one of two ways: either you are getting regular dental checkups and one of our dentists at The Smile Place sees a cavity while they are working on your teeth, or they could spot one in an X-ray. At this stage, the cavity will be small, and filling it will be easy.
However, if you haven’t had regular appointments and a cavity has been left to get bigger it will begin to cause you pain when you bite down as the tooth is starting to decay, this pain won’t just go away and will increase until the point where eating becomes almost unbearable. Never leave any dental pain to get to this point, when you feel even the slightest pain in a tooth you need to make an appointment to come see us immediately so we can decide what you need.
When we do find the cavity we will be able to make an inspection of it in order to decide what we need to do so that we can get it fixed, a second appointment will be booked that sets enough time aside to fill it.
At the appointment for the filling, we will numb the side of the face where the affected tooth is and begin work by drilling open the teeth so that we can get to the cavity, which is often hard to reach on its own; once enough space has been made we will clear out the hole of any debris and make sure there is no infection, then using a tooth coloured bonding material we will fill the cavity and shape it to recreate the form of the tooth then harden the bonding material with a special light. It is that simple, and we promise you won’t feel a thing.
Root canal
Root canal therapy is slightly more complicated as it deals with an infection deep inside the tooth’s pulp. Once this is done (and after numbing the face, of course), then we can flush out all the infection that has grown inside the tooth. Now available in Weybridge.
- An infected tooth is incredibly painful, but the treatment is painless as we use a liberal amount of local anaesthetic to put you at ease; we can even perform the treatment under sedation if you are anxious.
Once we have cleaned out the pulp, we will fill the tooth with a rubbery substance, saving it from having to be extracted. A dental crown will then be created to cap the top of the tooth. This is usually made from porcelain and will match your teeth once we can fit it permanently at The Smile Place.
NHS patients click here