Restorative Dental Care in New Westminster

Dental Fillings & Dental Bridges Near You

Your teeth are an important part of your overall health. Whether it’s tooth decay or missing teeth, dental problems can have a profound and significant impact on your overall well-being, leading to serious problems like bone loss and heart disease.

Artis Dental Centre provides a wide range of services to restore your teeth’ health and structure and reduce discomfort due to dental issues in our New Westminster, BC, V3L, 3B9 location.

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Our Restorative Services in New Westminster, BC, V3L 3B9.

Dental Fillings

When bacteria in your mouth encounter sugar, they digest the sugar leaving a by-product called lactic acid. This acid burns a hole (called a cavity) in your enamel and can then penetrate the underlying tissue called dentin. Left untreated, this cavity gets deeper and bigger, and can eventually affect the nerve of the tooth, initially causing sensitivity (toothache) and potentially a painful abscess and even tooth or bone loss.

To prevent a cavity from reaching this level of severity, the decaying tissue of the tooth needs to be removed, and the remaining cavity in the tooth needs to be filled. We call this a filling.

The dentist performs a filing by using a small drill to eliminate the decayed areas of the tooth. Then, once the cavity has been cleaned, the tooth is filled with a biocompatible material, restoring it to its original shape, and strengthening the tooth to prevent it from cracking. Sometimes, the dentist will complete the filling by coating the tooth with a special light-activated sealant.

Artis Dental Centre in New Westminster, BC, V3L 3B9 use white mercury-free fillings.

Bridges

A bridge is a device used to replace one or more missing teeth. In some cases, the device is secured to special types of crowns on either side of the missing teeth called abutments. Other times, the bridge is held in place by two dental implants that are installed in the jaw bone; one on either side the device. The abutments are attached to a row of false teeth, which are designed to look and feel like natural teeth.

If your bridge is going to be secured with crowns, the teeth on either side of the gap will need to be reshaped to accommodate the abutments. Once the natural teeth have been prepared, the abutment crowns will be cemented over top, securing the bridge in place. Bridges are ideal for patients who have several missing teeth in a row.

Inlays & Onlays

Sometimes, dental decay has gone too far to be fixable with a simple filling, yet not far enough to require a root canal and a crown. In this case, we typically use inlays and onlays.

Inlays are small devices that sit in your tooth, similar to a filling. The difference is that fillings are typically smaller than an inlay. Onlays sit over your tooth similarly to a crown. The difference is that crowns usually cover the entire tooth, while onlays only cover some of the tooth. Both inlays and onlays give additional strength and stability to the tooth, preventing cracks and breakage.

Wisdom Teeth Removal

Wisdom teeth are an extra set of molars that usually emerge around the age of 19. Some people find that their wisdom teeth erupt easily, aligning with their current teeth without causing any problems.

However, due to evolutionary changes to the human mouth, many patients don’t have space for their wisdom teeth to come in properly. As a result, wisdom teeth often cause alignment and bite issues, move teeth to incorrect spaces, or get stuck beneath the gum line, which can cause an infection.

To prevent this sort of problem, many patients need to have their wisdom teeth removed. If the tooth has already emerged from the gum, we may be able to simply pull the wisdom tooth. However, if the wisdom tooth has been impacted below the gum line, the tooth may need to be removed surgically.

Our dental clinic in New Westminster, BC, V3L 3B9 offers quality restorative dental care.