Discover How to Repair Your Smile
Restorative dentistry means that we are restoring missing or damaged teeth. And we restore teeth by returning the function and the aesthetics of them. And we can do that with a variety of materials. If it’s a small cavity or some decay or something that’s broken off of a tooth, I can do that with a white tooth-colored filling. If more than 30, 40 percent of the tooth is missing, then crowns or onlays, which is another term that partially covers the missing part of the tooth. But what I want to do is restore the teeth to its original strength.
With missing teeth, the biggest thing that concerns me is that the teeth neighboring that missing spot are also being affected negatively. The bone that supports those teeth, your body thinks that there’s no longer any function there. And what it does is it takes the resources, it takes the bone away from there, and the bone, the jawbone, will get smaller and smaller, and the support for those other teeth gets smaller and smaller. So if you’re just missing one tooth, you’re actually in the process of losing three more: the opposing tooth and the teeth on either side. I’m always trying to save those teeth also by replacing the one missing tooth.