Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Cerec Porcelain Fillings - Smile Solutions Melbourne

One of the most common misconceptions we find in dentistry is that most people think all

white fillings are the same. This is far from the truth. There are fundamentally two different

types of white fillings; porcelain and resin. We often compare the difference between porcelain

fillings and resin fillings like the difference between your plastic picnic plates verses

your fine china dinner wear. They're like chaulk and cheese; totally different products.

In terms of terminology, plastic white fillings can be referred to as composite or resin.

Porcelain fillings are often called inlays, ceramic or Cerec restorations. Both types

of restorations utilise the same blue light that is used to set hardened cement material.

The resin is placed in soft and set hard with the light, whereas the porcelain restoration

is a hard prefabricated filling that is bonded into the cavity. When a filling is on the

larger side requiring corners or what are termed as cusp replacements, we always recommend

porcelain reconstruction of the tooth to ensure that you are not back in the dental chair

fixing the same tooth again any time soon. The porcelain filling is no doubt more expensive,

but when you consider you may have to replace a plastic resin filling over and over, the

cost differential may prove to be a lot less than first envisaged. At Smile Solutions both

options of white fillings are readily available. It's a matter of working out with you which

option best suits your expectations and budget. I would like to introduce you to Dr Thorsten

Dannheimer who is considered by his peers at Smile Solutions to be an expert in the

field of Cerec dentistry. How are you Dr Thorsten?

Very well. And you? Very well, thank you. So tell me, I believe

you've been using this technology for some time and you've done quite a lot of fillings?

Yes I have. I started using this technology in 2001 and since then I've probably done

around 5,000+ of these restorations. And I believe there's lots of other dentists

here that also do the same type of work. Yes. I'm lucky to be with Smile Solutions

where we have a very large group of specialists and other Cerec users as well in the practice.

Yeah, we come together once a week to discuss cases and really further our knowledge and

share whatever information we've got with each other.

And tell me, what's the difference between a Cerec porcelain filling and a composite

resin filling? Cerec fillings are obviously made out of porcelain,

alright, which is very hard, and the resin fillings are normally out of plastic. For

bigger restorations at the back of the mouth we normally use a porcelain, which is quite

strong. And for smaller fillings, like smaller cavities in the front of the mouth, we normally

use plastic or resin fillings. For removing or replacing of the amalgam fillings, Cerec

is probably one of the best choices to use then.

And what are the benefits and advantages of having a Cerec porcelain filling as opposed

to a normal, white filling? It's a single visit procedure. The nice thing is we numb

you up once, it gets done in 90 minutes and you're out the door and it's all done. We

just take impressions, send them to the lab, get it back. So it's at least two weeks out

of your time and two visits. So it makes a lot more sense, especially with people nowadays

that don't have the time anymore. The other thing is it's a lot more superior. It's a

lot harder, it's really more natural looking than resin. It blends in very well with the

surrounding tooth structures. Also another thing is conservation of healthy tooth structure.

With modern bonding techniques that we use today there's no need to remove a lot of tooth

structure. We just remove what's necessary and replace that with a ceramic inlay.

Thorsten, can you run through what happens in a procedure?

First of all we do an examination, we take x-rays, we see what needs to be done. What

we do is we numb the patient up, we remove all the decay and the filling that needs to

be replaced. And once that's done we clean uo the mouth and everything. We then take

an infrared camera and take photos of the tooth. So we've got an inter-oral camera,

which is a 3D camera, and we put it on the tooth and actually take pictures. And you

can see the picture's coming up on the screen, on the Cerec unit, and that basically forms

the model. From that model we then actually design your new restoration with the help

of a computer. And the nice thing about that is we can actually change and make the filling

bigger, make it any shape you want, until we're happy, until the patient's happy. And

then we actually put in a block of ceramic into the metal unit, which is probably in

the room or somewhere next door, and start milling the restoration out of the block.

And then it comes out exactly the right size, yeah?

It comes out exactly the right size. And all we do is we just polish it, make it all nice

and shiny, glue it in, check the bite, that's it's all good, that it fits well, and there

you go. Well thank you so much for all that information

Thorsten. It was great chatting to you.