Operative dentistry

The area of dental practice concerned with the prevention and treatment of defects in tooth enamel and dentin is generally referred to as Operative Dentistry. Since many patients need treatment that is provided in operative dentistry, this is where most of the dental assistants are assigned. The phase of dentistry concerned with restoration of parts of the teeth that are defective through disease, trauma, or abnormal development to a state of normal function, health, and aesthetics, including preventive, diagnostic, biologic, mechanical, and therapeutic techniques, as well as material and instrument science and application.

Operative dentistry includes the treatment and restoration of carious teeth with metallic and non-metallic dental materials. These materials are usually amalgam, composite resins, and glass ionomer restorations.

Purpose

What are Filling, inlay and onlays?

When most people think of a “filling”, they imagine a substance made out of some sort of material, either metal or plastic that is placed directly in the cavity in a tooth, carved to resemble the original shape of the tooth, and then allowed to harden inside the hole to restore the form and function of the tooth. And indeed, it must also help relieve the pain associated with the cavity. In fact, these “direct” restorations, though by and large the most common types, due to their lower cost are only one half of the equation. Another type of restoration, less common due to their much higher cost, is called “indirect” restorations. These “fillings” justify their expense by being more durable (in other words, properly cared for, they should last longer than regular direct restorations), and also more pleasing to look at (better looking because they are actually built by a laboratory technician on a lab bench without the difficulties imposed by the time constraint and the poor access the dentist faces working in a patient’s mouth). Indirect fillings, made in a dental laboratory, are known as inlays and onlays.

Indirect fillings used to be more common when gold and ivory were the principal dental materials. With the advent of porcelain laboratory produced restorations, most dentists today prefer the superior strength and aesthetics of porcelain in the form of crowns, veneers, inlays and onlays rather than simply filling big cavities or structurally weak tooth with amalgam or direct resin composites.