Rogue Dentistry

Can you spot the grotty ‘white’ filling in the middle of the picture? Believe it or not this filling was not done at the turn of the century but completed a couple of years ago!

If you look at the tooth to the left of the one with the grotty ‘white’ filling you may be surprised to know that 15 mins previous to this photo it looked exactly like the grotty one. We are replacing this chap’s ugly white fillings with nice shiny new ones that look their age (ie well into the 21st century)…

People often ask if we enjoy dentistry. But who wouldn’t like being able to take out that grotty old filling and replace it with a nice shiny new one. We can get this invisible effect using our beautiful italian white filling materials, and a little bit of technique to go with it!!

Ok here’s the rub:

Grotty white filling in the middle of the picture
Estimated cost £20
Estimated time involved 5 mins
No guarantees
Replace every 2 years?

Shiny new Italian composite filling on the left
Time involved 15 mins
Cost £70
Cost of filling material: at least double that of the cheap stuff
5 year guarantee.

Quality dentistry costs less over time and makes you feel good.

Approx time to read: 2 mins

I wrote earlier today about white fillings. They are supposed to restore the natural beauty and strength of a damaged tooth.

But all too often they are neither beautiful nor strong…..

The problem is: amalgam fillings (the grey metal ones) are a doddle to fit. They are technique-insensitive. Because they are so forgiving, they tend to last a long time regardless of the skill of the operator (within reason).

In contrast, every step in the process of providing white fillings (from buying the right material through to polishing and finishing) is way more complex than it is for a comparable amalgam.

If you roll up a ball of cheap white filling material and squash it into a roughly prepped hole in the tooth: appointment time: 10 mins. Cost: £50.

The patient is ‘happy’ – they got a ‘cosmetic’ filling in 10 minutes for £50…..(the same patient is not so happy when that filling fails 2 years later and they then have to shell out £500 for a crown!).

Look at the picture of the old filling above (we removed it from a new patient): note how it is getting brown around the edges. Decay carries on merrily under the filling but nobody notices because it usually happens underneath. The result is root canal treatment if it is caught early, but extraction if not.

So here’s a picture of the Winning Smiles replacement white filling. Hard to spot the joins?

Producing natural looking, strong white fillings that last for more than 10 years does take more than 10 mins and costs more than £50.

However that 10 minute white filling could cost a patient the whole tooth!

No really. I thought it was a joke at first.

Just the other day I had a gentleman turn up at my surgery for the first time with one of his front teeth missing. When I asked the obvious ‘what’s happened’ he said that his own dentist extracted the tooth but forgot/didn’t bother to replace it with a temporary tooth at the extraction appointment!

I have to say both myself and Victoria my assistant looked at each other and were too shocked to speak! (not for long -ed)

Now, I’ve had plenty of patients walk into my office with front teeth missing over the years but

• most frequently the tooth has been knocked out in an accident
• they walk out with a tooth in place where there was none before.

I find it utterly amazing that in the developed world in 2008 someone can walk into a dental office with a tooth (albeit a wobbly one) in place – and walk out with no tooth at all!!

Suffice to say, despite there being no time in hand to sort this problem out – we had a ‘working’ lunch – we had a new tooth built from scratch and glued into place in less than an hour.

Once the gum has healed where the tooth was extracted we will be putting an dental implant tooth in as a permanent solution.

Had the patient come to Winning Smiles, it may well have been possible to put the implant tooth in at the same time as the extraction. Unfortunately a few days late is too late, as the gum grows down into the socket making immediate implant placement impossible.
OK Rant over!