A composite resin is a tooth-coloured plastic mixture filled with glass (silicon dioxide) first introduced in the 1960s. They have evolved over the last 50 years and are now very beautiful strong and durable, and can be shade matched to your own teeth. They are usually set with a bright blue light.
Composite fillings are usually more difficult to place than silver fillings.and are therefore more expensive They are a less ’forgiving’ material and to be successful they need to be placed a bit at a time and in a dry environment. (not always easy to achieve in the mouth).
The main advantage of composite fillings is their aesthetic appeal, they look like teeth. They are not always suitable for very large fillings , when a crown or a porcelain inlay may provide much better long term restoration. Tooth coloured fillings bond chemically to your tooth and can make it much stronger than filling with conventional amalgam (silver/metal) where the amalgam can act as a wedge over a long period of time and produce cracks in the teeth. Tooth coloured fillings are in fact used to help bond cracks together produced by amalgam fillings. Some patients prefer tooth coloured fillings because they are unhappy about the mercury content in silver fillings. We can replace your existing amalgam fillings with tooth coloured fillings in some circumstances. Your dentist will advise you.
