What Is Tooth Bonding: How Long Does It Last?
Tooth bonding is aesthetic dentistry therapy that helps to improve your smile by using a tooth-colored composite resin material to repair minor dental flaws. If you think aesthetic dentistry procedures like dental crowns and veneers are expensive or require endurance or discomfort at the dentist’s office, tooth bonding is unlike those procedures. This therapy is non-invasive, affordable, and, most importantly, entirely painless.
You can have chips or cracks in a particular tooth closed, camouflage tooth discoloration, hide spaces and gaps between your teeth, change the appearance of your teeth, making them look longer, or reshape them using dental bonding near you offered by dentists.
What Exactly Is Dental Bonding?
Dental bonding, alternatively called composite bonding, is an aesthetic dentistry therapy that helps boost your smile by covering the imperfections on specific teeth in your mouth that impact your smile. Considering this conservative and painless procedure, you don’t have to get all your teeth bonded. Instead, you can request your dentist to bond the affected tooth to make it appear better and complement your smile.
The material used to bond your teeth is similar to the material helpful for filling cavities with tooth-colored resin. Therefore besides the problems mentioned above, tooth bonding also helps if you have silver fillings in your front teeth and want to replace them with an aesthetic alternative. In addition, composite bonding also helps protect tooth roots exposed to gum recession.
Despite being a cosmetic dentistry procedure, tooth bonding will not impact your finances because it is the most affordable treatment in dentistry to cover minor dental flaws affecting your anterior teeth and impacting your smile because they are the most visible.
What Is Involved in the Tooth Bonding Process?
As mentioned, the dental bonding procedure is minimally invasive. It merely requires you to present yourself to the dentist near you requesting dental bonding to cover or hide the dental flaws described earlier.
When you visit the dentist nearby requesting dental bonding in Detroit, kindly only expect the dentist to start the treatment after examining your mouth. Dentists will examine to check whether you have infections like cavities or gum disease and suggest treating them before getting dental bonding. However, if everything is acceptable, the dentist selects a composite resin material best matching the color of your natural teeth by using a shade chart.
Your affected tooth or teeth is prepared for the application by roughing its surface and applying a conditioning liquid to help the composite resin adhere to your tooth. Immediately after the preparation, the dentist uses the composite resin on the tooth for molding and smoothing it to the desired shape. Next, expect the dentist to cure the composite resin by hardening it with ultraviolet light. Finally, they complete the treatment by polishing your tooth and making any adjustments required to give your tooth and natural-looking sheen.
The dentist completes the entire treatment using 30 to 60 minutes per tooth, although some dental work may require more time, especially if you want fillings replaced with aesthetic fillers.
How Discomforting Is Dental Bonding?
Tooth bonding isn’t painful because the dentist nearby will not work near any pain-sensing nerves inside your tooth. Therefore, you will not even require anesthesia when getting your teeth bonded by requesting this therapy to enhance the looks of your teeth to complement your smile. However, you might experience minor sensitivity after your teeth are bonded. However, the pain is temporary and comfortably relieved using over-the-counter painkillers.
How Long Does the Dental Bonding Last on the Teeth?
Composite resin material placed in fillings generally has a lifespan of five to seven years, and the material bonding your teeth is similar. Therefore you can expect the bonding material to stay on your teeth for a comparable period but can also extend the longevity of the treatment to a decade or more by maintaining proper dental hygiene and refraining from mouth-related habits like chewing ice, biting fingernails, and using teeth as tools instead of instruments for chewing and biting.
You are responsible for understanding that the composite resin material is less durable than tooth enamel and is prone to chipping and cracking if you indulge in the abovementioned habits. Therefore if you refrain from such practices and care for your teeth as the dentist recommends, you can expect the bonding treatment to stay on your teeth for a decade or more before needing replacements.
If you think minor, aesthetic defects are impacting your smile, you can discuss bonding your teeth with My Detroit Dentist if you want a conservative therapy to improve your smile. Expect a dental examination by the dentist before getting the treatment of your affected teeth in a couple of hours.