A resin filling is the formal name of a white filling composite. It’s basically done to replace what we all know as silver fillings and we call amalgams and it has come a long way to where it’s not just because it’s cosmetic but it’s also because it’s strong and it can do everything that the silver filling can while preserving more tooth structure than an amalgam filling. When we used to do amalgam fillings, the silver fillings, we had to design the filling in such a way that sometimes we would have to remove unnecessary tooth structure to be able to get the silver filling to hold in place.
With resin composite filling, we’re able to conserve as much of the tooth as possible because it is bonded onto the tooth as well as mechanically locked in. It’s important to catch a filling and do it early on because it’s more predictable. It hurts less to wait through a deep filling.
We start to get more symptoms. It’s uncomfortable. Treating it means you have to remove more tooth structure as it gets deeper and that’s not something we want to put our patients through especially if we can catch things early on and avoid removing unnecessary tooth structure, putting somebody through sensitivity if they didn’t need to if we had just watched it early.
A lot of times too, very small cavities, we try to be conservative and say hey if we can change certain things about your diet, your brushing habits at home, we may not have to tackle this at least not right now and we can just monitor until we’re ready to treat.
