Restoring your Smile Through Composite Restorations

Composite restorations are used to restore defects in teeth color, shape and position. Your dentist is responsible for understanding smile design, teeth shapes and positions, while selecting the proper teeth colors. Knowing the different composites available, with their placement and their polishing methods is of paramount importance for your dentist when restoring your teeth. What is of equal importance, however, is that your dentist should also know your esthetic goals.

The design of your smile is defined by its form and teeth size, as it is in relation to your mouth. Also determining your smile is the degree to which your gums show. The shape of your teeth requires a thorough knowledge of internal and external dental anatomy. The position of teeth is crucial to the smile, since some teeth are tilted or hidden due to positioning of an adjacent tooth. All these intricacies are considered when resculpting your smile. For instance, the midline of your smile might differ from the midline of your teeth and/or your face.

Teeth color is probably the components that is most often in disagreement. Therefore, the fewer people to decide on the color the better. Color is divided into three areas: the hue, the chroma and the value. However in dentistry we also have translucencies, which is the degree of florescence due to light transmission. All these items are components when trying to match the composite with the proper color.

A variety of composites exist. The difference is not really in quality, but rather in textures. The crystals that form a composite can be of different sizes. Therefore polishing is affected by the selection. The smaller the crystals are the finer polishing you will get. However, the composite has to be selected not in terms of crystal size, but rather on the location and the compressive strength necessary in that area.

The dentist has to bring all the above considerations in harmony with your dental goals. If the composite needed is very large, and your goals are very long term with very high expectation, your dentist might suggest laboratory processed work. This applies whether it is a composite or porcelain restoration. On the other hand, if the filling is small, chances are in-office composite is your best bet.

Dr. Michael Farahnic

Always Your Choice is proud to acknowledge Dr. Michael Farahnick for his authorship in the dental articles. Dr. Farahnick is a practitioner of Dentistry, including both prevention and treatment. His practice involves all age groups and he has expertise in the area of accomodating the patient who has dental fears. He also is an instructor of dentistry at New York University School of Dentistry. We are proud to refer to Dr. Farahnick and he has become the dentist of many of our patients at the office. His contribution to our web site is greatly appreciated.

Dr. Michael Farahnick's office is located at: 405 Lexington Avenue (The Chrysler Building) Suite 6900 New York, NY 10174 - 0360 His office may be
reached at : 212 - 557 - 1234 E-mail:softstick@tiac.net