Dental inlay restoration

Many children have black and broken teeth, which are caused by tooth decay due to improper cleaning. Many children will still have black and broken teeth if they don’t pay attention after their teeth are replaced, which will seriously affect their future teeth. Many adults also have missing teeth. Due to long-term improper cleaning, the teeth are corroded. In this case, a minor surgery of dental inlay is generally required. This article introduces the content about inlays, let’s take a look.

1. What is an inlay?

An inlay is a restoration that is embedded into a tooth to restore the shape and function of a tooth defect. Depending on the tooth surface covered by the inlay, it can be divided into single-sided inlay, double-sided inlay and multi-sided inlay. The difference between inlays and traditional fillings is that inlays are made by specialized dental technicians on an extraoral plaster model, which is then placed into the patient's mouth by the clinician and finally bonded.

2. Classification of Inlays

Depending on the materials used to make the inlay, it can be divided into alloy inlay, resin and porcelain inlay.

1. Inlays made of gold alloy have good ductility and mechanical properties and are ideal traditional restorative materials for making posterior tooth inlays.

2. The composition and polymerization method of the composite resin of resin inlay are more excellent than those of conventional filling resins. The material has little wear on teeth and is easy to repair. It is a good aesthetic inlay material.

3. Ceramic inlays include porcelain inlays made directly on refractory molds; porcelain inlays ground by CAD/CAM, and cast porcelain inlays cast after wax embedding on the model. They have excellent aesthetic properties.

Contraindications of inlay restoration

Since inlays are restorations that can only repair the defective part of the tooth but cannot protect the remaining part of the tooth, inlays can only be used when the tooth is defective but there is still a large volume of healthy tooth tissue remaining. That is to say, the crown used for inlay must have sufficient height and thickness of the remaining tooth wall to enable it to obtain retention and resistance.

4. Advantages of inlay restoration

The entire process of inlay production completely avoids interference factors caused by operations inside the mouth. This allows the production of inlays to be more delicate than traditional fillings. When making the inlay, the technician will control the degree of fit between it and the tooth, so as to avoid tooth decay again during future use as much as possible. It can be understood as a "restoration tailor-made for teeth", which fits well with the teeth in terms of shape, hardness and other aspects. Since the entire production process of the inlay is completed outside the mouth, it can restore the original shape and chewing efficiency of the teeth, which is incomparable to traditional fillings in any way.