New tooth-colored fillings sensitive? They should not be!

What is “Den­tal Bonding?”

When most peo­ple think of “bond­ing,” they are think­ing of tooth-colored den­tal fill­ings, or com­pos­ite fill­ings.  To be com­pletely tech­ni­cal for a moment (I try to avoid that as much as pos­si­ble to not bore you ), “bond­ing” is actu­ally the series of steps and the prod­ucts we den­tists use to make the tooth-colored fill­ings actu­ally STICK to the teeth.  OK — tech­ni­cal moment is over.  Whew, aren’t you glad of that? 

“Owww! My New White Fill­ing is REALLY Sen­si­tive! WHY?”

An issue that many patients have expe­ri­enced in the past, is that their new tooth-colored fill­ings seem to be mildly or even extremely sen­si­tive to cold, and some­times hot, foods and drinks, even just to tap­ping your teeth together.  Nat­u­rally, it’s not a fun expe­ri­ence, and one that all con­sci­en­tious den­tists try to avoid for their patients, but even in 2009, when one would imag­ine there is a solu­tion, many patients still run into this prob­lem.  Here’s the thing, though.….…THERE IS A SOLUTION!

OK, you’re prob­a­bly ask­ing, if there’s a solu­tion, why is it still a prob­lem?  Well, it’s sim­ply a mat­ter of tech­nique, really, and get­ting the tech­nique for bond­ing is actu­ally more dif­fi­cult than it might seem to be.  In addi­tion, just as in the rest of the world, there are MANY bond­ing prod­ucts that den­tists can use when doing tooth-colored fill­ings, but just because the com­pa­nies that pro­duce them sup­pos­edly have research behind these prod­ucts, they’re not all they’re always promised to be.  Some work bet­ter than oth­ers in strength, sen­si­tiv­ity, durability.….and it can hon­estly be rather tough to sort through all the stuff that com­pa­nies throw at us, just like for physi­cians with all the stuff phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies throw at them.  So it is CRITICAL that den­tists really stay up on the lat­est research, but here’s the thing.….just because some­thing has the “lat­est and great­est, newest and most improved,” labels all over it, that doesn’t mean it actu­ally works as well as the old stuff all the time.

There’s one other REALLY CRITICAL FACTOR for long-term suc­cess of com­pos­ite fill­ings, and that is keep­ing the teeth DRY while the bond­ing is placed and acti­vated, then the fill­ing mate­r­ial is lay­ered into the tooth. Saliva con­t­a­m­i­na­tion is one of the most com­mon rea­sons for bonded fill­ings to be sen­si­tive, and it’s also one of the most com­mon rea­sons bonded com­pos­ite fill­ings fail ear­lier than they should.  There are a cou­ple tech­niques den­tists can and SHOULD use to do this — a Rub­ber Dam or some­thing like the Isolite2 Dry­field Illu­mi­na­tor sys­tem.  Both are pretty inex­pen­sive for the den­tist to have (we have both and use them as appro­pri­ate), both are pretty easy to use, and to tell the hon­est truth, they actu­ally make it EASIER for us to com­plete your den­tal work faster and with bet­ter results.  I really don’t know why not all den­tists use 1 or the other; I can’t imag­ine prac­tic­ing with­out them, ’cause it’s a lot harder to get good fillings!

So there you go: 2 of the most com­mon rea­sons why bonded, tooth-colored, com­pos­ite fill­ings are often sen­si­tive to hot and cold foods/liquids or even just tap­ping your teeth together.

The good news in our office?  I’m for­tu­nate to actu­ally know the man who basi­cally INVENTED bond­ing, and I not only use the tech­niques he teaches, but I even use the most cur­rent mate­ri­als that he him­self has devel­oped and/or rec­om­mends, and I can hon­estly say that ALMOST NO ONE who gets tooth-colored fill­ings in my office ever has hot/cold sen­si­tiv­ity after­wards.  There are rare excep­tions, ’cause I’m not going to claim per­fec­tion, but they’re quite rare indeed.