Recent case to show and techniques used

Recent case to show and techniques used

Last week I treated a very nice gentlman who wanted to replace these amalgam restorations into tooth coloured ones.

I want to show you the procedure I used and should be adopted when removing any kind of restoration. This will provide safety for the patient and good visibility for the dentist.

The pink stuff you can see is called rubber dam.

A rubber dam or dental dam is a rectangular sheet of latex used by dentists, especially for root canal treatment, but also for things like tooth-coloured fillings.  Why use a raincoat for your teeth? (Rubber dam) You don’t have to worry about your tongue getting in the way It protects your throat from little bits of tooth debris If you are prone to gagging, it helps to protect your gag reflex area from being triggered It protects the lips and cheeks by keeping them out of the way It keeps the tooth dry – very important nowadays because many materials need a dry clean environment for tooth-coloured fillings to bond properly It can create a distance between yourself and the treatment:  Many people have a fear of the rubber dam because they are worried that they won’t be able to breathe and/or swallow. In the normal way (with the usual rubber dam design, where the sheet is put on a frame), there is lots of room around the sides, so you will be able to breathe through your mouth:  After the rubber dam had been placed, the old amalgam restorations were removed and underlying caries.

The cavities were then lined with a liquid material called fuji II, this has fluoride and allows to bring strength directly to the dentine for upto one year after placement. This type of material is set hard with a blue light for about 20 seconds. The composite ( tooth coloured material ) is then placed in small increments into the cavity and cured at each stage by the blue light. This allows the material to become hard. The final restorations can be seen below. They were then polished and the occlusion ( bite ) of the patient finally checked after the rubber dam was removed and the teeth were given their final polish.