- A dental filling is one of the most common things done in a dentist’s office.
- A dental filling is a material that replaces enamel and dentin. That is, it replaces tooth tissue damaged by decay.
- When you have a sweet or cold sensitivity located on a tooth, it is very likely to be a cavity.
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To better understand the process by which a cavity forms, I will explain the structure of a tooth.
The layer on the outside is called enamel and is the hardest tissue in the body and coats the tooth on the outside. The enamel layer is very strong and resistant to the action of bacteria and acids.
When you eat a lot of sweets and don’t brush your teeth well enough to remove deposits from your teeth, the bacteria in your mouth will break down (feed on) the food that remains on your teeth and turn it into acid. This acid attacks the surface of the enamel and over time if you don’t do proper hygiene of your teeth for a long time some cracks will form in the enamel, it seeps in and that’s how cavities appear.
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Caries can be seen in the early stages when it is only in the enamel layer. At this point the treatment is simple. The decayed enamel is removed and then a filling is placed with specific materials.
But what if no intervention is made at this early stage?
Maybe you are a person who feels pain quite badly and then you will not feel pain when a cavity advances.
If you don’t feel the pain or if you are afraid to go to the dentist for the cavity you have, it will advance and reach the next deeper layer.
It gets into the dentin layer of the tooth. This layer of dentin is less resistant to decay because it has a different composition than enamel.
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By the time it has reached the dentin it should start to hurt because it is much closer to the tooth pulp. That is, it is much closer to the nerve endings of the tooth that are attacked by decay. That’s why you’ll feel some pain.
There are unfortunate situations where tooth decay progresses so far that it reaches the dental pulp. What does this mean? Every root of your tooth has a dental pulp. This dental pulp is made up of nerve fibers and blood vessels that keep the tooth alive in your mouth.
If this dental pulp is attacked by decay (germs and bacteria) it starts to swell, the dental pulp swells and puts pressure on those nerve fibers. That’s why it hurts so much.
The dental pulp is disturbed by the bacteria that have come over it and wants to defend itself. It defends itself by inflammation. It’s the body’s defense reaction when there’s an attack from the outside.
If you get to the dentist in time to get this dental pulp out and avoid terrible pain, then the dentist will do a root canal.
What does this mean? They remove all the dental pulp from the tooth, disinfect the place very well, and widen the canals where the dental pulp has been sitting with specific instruments so that the material that will be put in place of the dental pulp fills the place very well and seals all that space.
But what if you still don’t get to the dentist? This whole process will evolve and will reach the stage of pulp necrosis.
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That is, the dental pulp will die. Maybe you’ve never felt pain before and don’t know what’s going on inside your tooth. The tooth begins to change color, it becomes dull, opaque, grey, or even black. You will no longer feel any pain in that tooth because you have pulp necrosis.
Because of this, an infectious reaction is triggered at the tip of the root. An abscess appears at the tip of the root (at bone level). This abscess is a large inflammation and because the inflammation wants to increase in volume there will be more pain because the bone does not expand so easily.
There are situations where some people may not feel pain even at this stage, or there are people who are afraid to come to the dentist for treatment, or various reasons do not go to the dentist. What happens then?
The decay will spread a lot because the tooth is no longer nourished by the dental pulp. The tooth becomes brittle and pieces of the tooth break off. Unfortunately, the treatment, in this case, is tooth extraction. Nothing can be recovered from the surface of the tooth.
Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay
You may not feel pain when you have a deep cavity that has reached the tooth pulp. That’s why it’s a good idea to go for regular dental check-ups to have an X-ray and to make sure that everything is alright with your teeth.