Many dentists now specialize in cosmetic dentistry. This booming field of dentistry includes processes to correct such cosmetic and restorative tooth problems as whitening teeth that have darkened, covering pits and imperfections, filling gaps between teeth or changing the shape of a tooth to align it with the others.
Bonding is the process of etching tooth enamel with a mild acid,
coating it with a primer material, then adding a tooth-colored composite (a resin material of plastic consistency) layer by layer, hardening each layer for about 20 seconds with a fiber optic tube of concentrated light. The light activates the catalyst that causes the composite to harden.
The beauty of bonding is that it’s so safe. But it’s far more than that to patients who have stained chipped, misshapen or unevenly spaced teeth.
After using polymer strips to wall off the adjoining teeth, a dentist brings the patient’s indented discolored tooth into line
with layers of composite, carefully chosen to color-match the other
teeth. Twenty seconds of fiber-optic light, and the bond is secure
and bonded again and the patient’s broad grin reveals nicely spaced teeth.
There are other advantages. In contrast to capping, crowning, extracting a tooth or patching it with silicates such as porcelain fillings,
bonding requires no drilling, impressions or anesthesia. Bonding can be done in one visit, and it is less costly (about one-third to one-half the cost of a crown or cap).
Actually, it is not the adhesion process that is new; it is the material
used and the way in which it is applied. Some form of acid-etched
adhesion always has been necessary for fillings and crowns. But it is only in the past 5 -8 years that the composites have reached such high quality, enabling a broad range of tooth color. And the concentrated beam of light was discovered to be the superior catalyst.
The roots of today’s bonding techniques date to 1955, when Dr. Michael Buonocore of the Eastman Dental Center in Rochester, N.Y.,
developed an adhesive sealant and described the use of an acid etch to improve the bonding of resins to enamel. In the late 1960s, he began applying his method clinically, and, in the early 1970s, the dental profession began using the clinical application of his technique.
In 1971, at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Dr. Charles
Martinez pioneered the use of clear resin sealants that mechanically
stuck to the chewing surfaces of children’s teeth to prevent decay.
BY 1973, they were adding colored bonding, now offered by more and more dentists. The procedure also is used for stained, darkened, chipped and broken teeth and front fillings, and may one day take the place of crowns and inlays. composites to the clear resin.
The tooth-colored composites made it possible to help those young
patients whose illness had marred their teeth. Cystic fibrosis children
were especially vulnerable to the blackish or brownish permanent
stains caused by treatment with tetracycline.
