Dental Bonding


Dental Bonding describes the fusing of a material to your teeth. There are two types of dental bonding, direct and indirect. Direct bonding is used for fillings and minor color changes. Indirect bonding is used with crowns, caps and veneers.

Direct Bonding: This is an exciting development in modem dentistry. For the first time we have the ability to attach something to a tooth without having to cut away tooth structure first. Even though we usually do prepare the tooth for bonding, the preparations are much smaller and the bond is much stronger than when composite resins first came out. The preparations are very different from those we use to use for the silver-mercury fillings. The material we use for this direct bonding is a hard resin/composite with very specific color considerations. The resin is usually totally invisible to the naked eye, and the fillings are often so often lifelike that the teeth appear to be untouched. We use direct bonding for fillings, minor tooth enhancements, diastema closures, and to replace unsightly stains in the smile zones.

Indirect Bonding: This is a cosmetically superb way to restore a tooth. We use the direct bonding material (the very hard resin cement) to laminate (or glue) a durable material like porcelain to a prepared tooth. One of the advantages of this technique is the ability to spend a lot of time in the lab to perfect the color, the fit, and the shape of the restoration before it is tried in the mouth. The finished restoration is then able to mimic the natural teeth. .