What are "dental fillings"?

What are "dental fillings"?

Ronald Rosenblatt, DDS (General and Cosmetic Dentistry) gives expert video advice on: What are the main causes of cavities?; How do I know if I have a cavity?; How can I prevent cavities? and more...

If you have a toothache and you have a cavity, and you go to the dentist and he takes an X-ray and says, "You have a cavity", many things will then begin to happen. The first thing the dentist is going to do if you have pain with this cavity, is anesthetize the tooth using some type of Novocain. No one uses Novocain any more, but they all still call it Novocain. Then the dentist is going to use his drill to eliminate all of the tooth decay. Next, they are going to make sure the structure of the tooth is sound after this removal. And then the dentist is going to place a dental filling to restore the shape and contour of your tooth to its original condition, or in some cases, even better than the original condition. The dentist will use a variety of materials for this dental filling, depending upon what you want, what is necessary for the tooth, and what will last a long time in your mouth. If your tooth has been anesthetized then the whole dental filling procedure will be painless. There are occasions after the numbness goes away, that there is some sensitivity to cold. There are a lot of materials that the dentist can use to help this not happen, but sometimes it happens because the filling material conducts cold far more easily than the tooth did before. And so the cold gets towards the nerve of the tooth more than it would have before the filling. However, this is almost always a temporary condition and goes away in a couple days.