What Are Dental Inlays and Onlays?
Dental inlays and onlays are tooth-colored fillings crafted from advanced ceramics. An inlay sits in a single surface of the tooth or fits completely within the cusps if on the top. An onlay is more extensive, covering multiple surfaces or extending over one or more cusps.
As a dentist in Wilmington, NC, we use advanced ceramic materials with excellent translucency to match the luster of natural teeth. These materials come in various colors, and we custom-dye them for a superb color match. They are also very strong, which contributes to their high success rate, as we’ll discuss below.
While dental inlays and onlays are excellent options for restoring damaged teeth, there are several alternatives depending on your needs:
- Dental Fillings: Dentists use traditional fillings for smaller cavities and make them from materials like composite resin or amalgam.
- Crowns: For more extensive damage, crowns cover the entire tooth and offer additional protection.
- Veneers: Dentists apply thin shells to the front of teeth to improve appearance.
- Bonding: Dentists use composite resin to repair minor damage or enhance the appearance of teeth.
- Root Canals: NA root canal becomes necessary if the tooth’s pulp is damaged, often followed by a crown.
- Sealants: Dentists apply protective coatings to the chewing surfaces of back teeth to prevent decay.
One-Visit Convenience
Dentists have used inlays and onlays for over a hundred years, but despite their attractiveness, in the past they have been less popular because dentists used to send them to a lab to have inlays and onlays made.
Now, though, CEREC technology allows us to make your inlays and onlays in a single visit. We will first remove any decay from your tooth. Then we scan your teeth and create a 3D computer model to guide the process. We use that model to design your restoration. We send the plan to our diamond mill, which precisely mills the restoration according to the plan. Why a diamond mill? Many of the materials we use contain aluminum oxide, which in nature occurs as the second-hardest element, corundum, which includes rubies.
Once we create the restoration, we polish it, check the fit and color match, and cement it in place. The entire procedure takes about an hour to an hour and a half, depending on the complexity of the restoration.
Excellent Performance
With the convenience of CEREC inlays and onlays, you might think that they’re kind of throwaway restorations, similar to the temporary crowns you may have had in the past, but you’d be wrong. Studies show that 94-95% of CEREC inlays and onlays last ten years or more, and and a full 89% lasted 17 years in long-term studies.
In fact, a study comparing CEREC inlays and onlays to other filling options shows that they have the lowest failure rate of any options. Here are the seven fillings compared and their respective annual failure rates:
- Glass ionomer fillings 7.7%
- Amalgam 3.3%
- Composite fillings 2.2%
- Composite inlays/onlays 2.0%
- Ceramic inlays/onlays produced in a lab 1.6%
- Gold inlays/onlays 1.2%
- CEREC inlays/onlays 1.1%
With such a low failure rate and high aesthetic value, we confidently describe CEREC inlays and onlays as the best fillings available.
If you would like to learn more about the best filling option in Wilmington, NC, including dental inlays and onlays, please call (910) 392-6060 for an appointment at Kuzma Advanced Dentistry.
