Dental Fillings Process
The steps involved in getting a dental filling:
Dental fillings are a time-tested and effective way to keep tooth decay from doing further damage to your teeth and oral health.
Dental Fillings in Yakima
We often do our best to brush and floss daily and to try avoid those sugary snacks but sometimes we just can’t avoid cavities. When a cavity occurs you need a filling to avoid the tooth decay. A filling will seal up the small decaying hole in your tooth. It’s one of the most common dental treatments we perform. Everytime you come to our office, we check to see if you have a cavity that needs filling, even if you don’t notice if anything is wrong. We do this because if left untreated, the cavity wouldn’t go away and would spread deeper inside the tooth and could cause additional issues, like a root canal. It’s much easier for our patients to have their cavities filled then to wait and deal with the pain and cost of more expensive procedures. This is why we strongly encourage our patients to visit us every six months.
Book an Appointment
- Receive anesthetic to numb the tooth
- Mouth is prepared to for filling and making patient more comfortable
- Tooth decay is removed
- Tooth decay is replaced with composite filling
- Dentist will check your bite to make sure it’s not too high
- Congratulations – You’re done and your tooth is fixed
Dental Fillings Pain
After a filling is completed, you may feel some sensitivity in your tooth for a couple days. If your tooth hurts or is sensitive only when you bite down, you should go back and see your dentist as there could be an issue. The issue is most likely that your filling is too high and needs to be adjusted. The adjustment process is simple and painless because your dentist will smooth down the filling to ensure your bite is back to normal.
Types of Dental Fillings
The material we use and recommend is composite tooth fillings. An advantage of composite fillings is the filling can be shaded to match the color of our patients teeth, making it less visible. We want all our patients to have natural-looking smiles without showing their fillings, therefore, we recommend composite fillings to our patients. However, we have other options if our patients prefer another filling material.
