Dental bonding (or as it is less often referred to, adhesive dentistry), is a process for reshaping or rebuilding your teeth, or covering chips and cracks using composite resins, which are materials that are colored to match your natural tooth. You know how it happens – you’re enjoying a meal and suddenly, something hard and possibly sharp ends up in your mouth. If you don’t know and trust your eatery, you’re probably hoping that whatever’s in there isn’t harmful. Then you find out that it’s a bit of tooth and you’re thinking, “I really hope that’s mine!” We offer Dental Bonding here at KC Smile located in Overland Park, KS.
All right, all joking aside, chipping a tooth is a very common dental emergency, but fortunately it’s also one that can be fixed quickly and easily. If no more than a third of the tooth has been removed, you probably don’t need a crown – the problem can be corrected using dental bonding. It’s a cosmetic procedure as well as a restorative one and it’s designed to bring the tooth back to its former condition in terms of size, shape and color.
Bonding is actually a very easy procedure that doesn’t require a whole lot of preparation, unless the tooth is severely damaged. For minor chipping, you may not even need a local anesthetic. Fractures that aren’t close to the nerve of the tooth can usually be repaired simply by roughening up the surface a bit and cleaning the edges so that the tooth can accept the bonding. To do the dental bonding, an acid etch consisting of phosphoric acid will be used on your tooth in order to open up any debris that may be present and to open up small holes, called tubules. Then, a primer is applied to dampen the surface and allow the bonding adhesive to flow into the tubules. Now the bonding material is applied and molded into the right shape and the dentist will use a special light to cure the material. Once it’s hardened, the dentist will do a bit more polishing and shaping to make sure that the sheen is the same as that of your surrounding teeth.
Altogether, the process will take less than an hour and the bonding won’t be noticeable because it will exactly match your existing teeth.
Are there disadvantages to bonding? Well, it’s not as strong as a crown, but then again it’s not nearly as expensive. All things considered, bonding is a great way to repair a damaged tooth. If you’re in need of dental bonding, contact Dr. Headley DDS at KC Smile today!
