Composite Restoration

Composite Restoration

Dental restoration is a treatment to restore the function, integrity, and morphology of missing tooth structure resulting from caries or external trauma.

Power of Composite Restoration

No material in the history of dentistry has undergone as much of an evolution as composite resin, especially since successful bonding to dentin was achieved. Since then, the goal of clinical and material science has been to find simple, predictable approaches to the composite restorative process.

Compared with dental amalgam, the oldest direct restorative, the placement of composite requires many more steps and an exacting technique to achieve the best results.

Direct Dental Composite Restoration

Direct dental composites are placed by the dentist in a clinical setting. Polymerization is accomplished typically with a hand held curing light that emits specific wavelengths keyed to the initiator and catalyst packages involved. When using a curing light, the light should be held as close to the resin surface as possible, a shield should be placed between the light tip and the operator's eyes. Curing time should be increased for darker resin shades. Light cured resins provide denser restoration than self-cured resins because no mixing is required that might introduce air bubble porosity.

Direct dental composites can be used for:

• Filling cavity preparations.
• Filling gaps (diastemas) between teeth using a shell-like veneer.
• Minor reshaping of teeth.
• Partial crowns on single teeth.

Ethetics of Composite Restoration

Synthetic resins evolved as restorative materials since they were insoluble, of good tooth-like appearance, insensitive to dehydration, easy to manipulate and reasonably inexpensive In the past, achieving a strong and durable restoration for posterior composites may have been a challenge, which often compromised esthetics.