Doing Away with Decay

Doing Away with Decay

“Fill ’er up.”

Now that’s something you don’t hear anymore, unless you like to talk to yourself when you’re at the gas station. If you’re old enough to remember asking a service station attendant to fill up your car with gas, you’re probably old enough to have a few caries.

What? Caries.

Don’t worry if you don’t know what “caries” are, but dental caries are the most common oral disease. The process of getting caries is called tooth decay. Now you know what we’re talking about!

OK, you know them as cavities. But that’s really a misnomer. There isn’t a true cavity in the actual sense of the word, which indicates a space. The term may have come from what follows, the cleaning out of all decay in a tooth. What’s left is a “cavity” that will need to be filled. Why? Because if it were left open it would quickly fill with food debris and bacteria would become lodged in there. It needs to be filled.

Ah, there’s the reason it’s called a “filling.”

At Dr. Egger’s we fill dental caries every day. Today you have more options for your fillings than in the past.

Types of fillings with Dr. Egger

Most of us think of fillings as the silver pockets we see in the molars of other people when they talk or otherwise open their mouths. Well, they’re not really silver, they’re actually mostly mercury! That is disconcerting to many people. After all, if you wanted mercury, you’d eat some fish that had been hanging around the bottom of the Rouge River! Silver fillings are made of silver amalgam. To make them, we mix mercury (50% of the eventual filling) with a powder comprised of silver, copper, tin, or zinc (usually a combination of some or all of those). There really isn’t any potential for harm from the mercury in your amalgam fillings. They’ve been studied by the FDA and they’ve been used since the 1800s. Still, some people don’t like the idea of being like that Rouge River fish.

• Composite fillings are becoming more and more popular because they are very close to tooth color. The resin is made of a mixture of plastic and glass. Problem is composite fillings are not as durable as amalgam and cost more. Up until recently, composite fillings have been used to fill cavities on teeth with low chewing pressure. But every year, composite resins become harder and durable. So, Dr. Egger now uses them on molars.
• Ceramic or porcelain fillings have the admirable quality of being durable and having high aesthetic value because their color can closely match the natural color of the patient’s teeth. They are more expensive, but resist staining and aren’t easily scratched as composite resin can be.
• Glass ionomer fillings are made of a combination of acrylic and glass. They are intended for children’s baby teeth because they only last five years and release fluoride to strengthen the surrounding natural teeth.
• Gold fillings used to be popular (your Uncle Herb may have a couple gold fillings that you get the pleasure of seeing at Thanksgiving when he chews with his mouth open), but their visibility and expense have greatly decreased the use of gold in fillings. Still, they are very durable, sturdy, and non-corrosive.

If you have tooth pain, it could be a sign of decay living there. Call Dr. Egger at 989-773-3560 and let’s take a look.