To restore a damaged area of your tooth, Dr. Cochran offers inlays and onlays to restore your tooth back to its normal function.

Inlays

When one of our patients suffers from a cavity that is too severe to treat with a filling, dental inlays will likely be used to treat the cavity. A dental inlay is placed in the tooth and will replace the enamel, and it does not extend over the edges of the tooth. After the patient has been numbed with a local anesthetic, Dr. Cochran will remove decay from the infected tooth, create an impression of that tooth, and send it off to a dental lab. The lab will manufacture a permanent inlay from composite resin or porcelain in a shade that matches the color of the rest of the tooth. Meanwhile, Dr. Cochran will provide the patient with a temporary inlay to prevent further pain and infection while the permanent one is being created.

Onlays

Compared to inlays, onlays act like a partial crown, and dentists typically opt to fit an onlay to their patient if they believe the tooth surface is too weak to endure a regular filling. After numbing the tooth, Dr. Cochran will clean out the cavity and create an impression of the infected tooth to manufacture the unique permanent onlay.

This process may require the patient to come in for two appointments; the first one to take the impression and place the temporary onlay, and the second one to replace the temporary onlay with the permanent mold roughly 7–10 days later. Dr. Cochran strongly recommends that his patients take good care of their temporary onlays since carelessness and poor dental hygiene can cause serious and painful side effects.

If you are interested in learning more about the ins-and-outs of inlays and onlays, feel free to schedule an appointment with our team at Cochran Family Dentistry.