You’ve been told your old filling needs to go. Maybe it’s cracked, worn down, or just not doing its job anymore. And now you’re sitting there wondering what exactly comes next?
The good news is that replacing a filling doesn’t always mean a crown. In fact, there’s a whole range of options sitting between a simple white filling and a full dental crown, and choosing the right one can make a significant difference to the long-term health of your tooth. At East Park Dental, we believe in giving patients a clear picture of what’s going on in their mouth, and why we recommend what we do.
Here’s a straightforward guide to the options.
For smaller areas of decay or damage, a white (composite) filling is still the most common solution. Modern white fillings are a world away from the old grey amalgam ones as they bond directly to the tooth, look completely natural, and can be completed in a single appointment.
If you’ve got an older silver filling that’s starting to fail, replacing it with a white filling is often perfectly appropriate, provided the surrounding tooth structure is healthy and strong enough to support it.
This is where things get a little less well known but inlays and onlays are genuinely worth understanding.
An inlay fits neatly within the cusps (the raised points) of a back tooth, like a very precisely shaped puzzle piece. An onlay does the same, but also covers one or more of those cusps when they’ve been damaged or weakened. Both are made in a laboratory from tooth-coloured porcelain or composite, and they’re custom-crafted to fit your tooth perfectly.
Why choose an inlay or onlay over a filling? When the damage is too extensive for a filling to reliably hold, but the tooth doesn’t need the full coverage of a crown, an inlay or onlay gives you something much more durable and better-fitting. They also put far less stress on the remaining tooth structure than a crown preparation does which, as Oliver, one of our dentists, puts it, is exactly the kind of thinking behind minimally invasive dentistry.
“Every time we touch a tooth, we’re committing it to repeated interventions throughout someone’s life. The idea is to do what’s needed but no more than that.”
A crown covers the entire visible part of a tooth, right down to the gum line. It’s the right call when a tooth has been significantly weakened by a large old filling, a crack, or root canal treatment and needs that full structural support to function safely.
Crowns at East Park Dental are made to match your surrounding teeth, so they look completely natural. Thanks to our CEREC technology, many crowns can even be designed, milled, and fitted in a single visit, no temporary crown, no second appointment.
Honestly? That’s what we’re here for. At your dental health check, we’ll assess exactly how much of the natural tooth structure remains, how the forces of biting are distributed, and what’s going to give you the best long-term outcome. We’ll always explain our thinking and talk you through the options before anything is decided.
If you’re based near Towcester or Northampton and you’ve been putting off dealing with an old or failing filling, now is a good time to get it looked at, small problems are always easier (and less expensive) to treat than big ones.
