What can I do to prevent cavities?
Maintain optimal oral health
- Brush your teeth twice a day with fluoride toothpaste
- Clean your teeth daily with an interdental brush
- Limit your eating moments to a maximum of seven per day
- Visit your dentist regularly for check-ups
When is a filling necessary?
A filling is used to restore the tooth when you have a cavity or if a piece of tooth has broken off.
In the past, dentists used amalgam as a filling material. These silver-colored fillings are clearly visible in the mouth. Although these fillings can remain in the mouth for a long time and are strong, composite is used today. This material has a number of advantages: the fillings are tooth-colored and therefore less noticeable in the mouth. The material is, as it were, glued to the tooth, so that the dentist has to remove little to no healthy tooth tissue. This technique ensures good adhesion to the tooth, which helps the fillings stay in place better.
Other filling materials are gold and porcelain, but both are rarely used due to the high cost. In contrast to amalgam and composite, gold and porcelain fillings cannot be placed directly in the mouth. These materials are cast in a mold outside the mouth. The casting is then placed in the mouth by the dentist.