How Much Do Dental Fillings Cost in Winnipeg, MB?
Getting a dental filling in Winnipeg does not have to be as costly as some may think. At Shine Dental, we’ll do our best to get your filling completed quickly and affordably.
On average a dental filling in Winnipeg will cost between $150 - $400. However, the cost will vary depending on how many surfaces you require with respects to the extent of the decay. It also varies with the type of materials being used to fill the cavity. Many people opt for inlays and onlays instead of regular amalgam or composite fillings since they last much, much longer and conserve tooth structure compared to a crown.
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Dental fillings are the backbone of dental offices. Drill and fill dentistry has been going strong since the advent of air driven handpieces and has served to take millions of people out of pain.
Decades ago, before the hay day of dental fillings, when there were problems with teeth, the teeth were simply extracted. Further, when a tooth was to be extracted, many times multiple good teeth or even all the teeth were extracted under the guise of, “it’s only a matter of time”.
Fast forward to this new century, we find a lot of people missing many or all of their teeth because their dentist from ages past didn’t ‘do’ fillings. These people now require dental implants to preserve bone structure, retain dentures or keep them from requiring dentures.
A dental filling is a restoration that helps to strengthen your natural tooth when decay is present. A filling can encompass one surface or all five surfaces of a tooth. Getting a filling can reduce hot and cold sensitivity and can look as natural as your actual tooth, to fit in with the neighbouring teeth. Having fillings placed is a great minor investment to make.
Before the advent of tooth coloured fillings, amalgam fillings were quite common. Amalgam fillings, also known as, ‘silver fillings’ are dark in colour and they are quite noticeable when someone is smiling or even talking. Amalgam fillings are an ‘amalgam’ of many different types of substances, namely mercury. Mercury is what has given amalgam fillings a bad wrap.
But in fact, the greater issue with amalgam fillings lies in their thermal coefficient of expansion and contraction. This basically means that amalgam fillings and tooth structures expand and contract at different rates; like water and a pop bottle in a freezer. When one substance expands at a different rate under hot and cold conditions, something has got to give. In the water and pop bottle example, the water comes spewing out of the top of the bottle.
In the case of amalgam fillings and teeth, micro-cracks can form in the tooth, causing future cracked cusps. To add to this problem, most amalgam fillings are not bonded to the tooth structure, thus requiring larger amounts of tooth material to be drilled away for mechanical locking of the filling material to ensure they don’t fall out.
Today, the more popular filling of choice is a tooth coloured filling material called, composite. These fillings are almost undetectable to the naked eye and blend in seamlessly with the adjacent tooth structures. Composites are bonded fillings which means they are essentially glued in place. Because of this, more conservative tooth preparations can be made, which preserves tooth structure. This is crucial, because in essence, fillings are ‘temporary’ in nature. It’s not that fillings only last a few weeks, but it’s very rare to have a filling last for decades. And because of this, when fillings do fail, more tooth structure will need to be sacrificed in order to keep the filling in place.
Both amalgam and composite fillings can be performed chair-side. This means that they are completed all in one visit with the decay removed and the filling is placed at the same time. Other restorations, called inlays and onlays are a 2-step approach whereby a tooth is prepared by removing the decay and then a very strong restoration is either milled chair-side or sent to a lab to be fabricated. These inlays or onlays are either made from feldspathic porcelain, zirconia or gold.
Dental fillings mainly fail because of recurrent decay. Fillings don’t normally break down structurally. Instead, they break down at the margin between the filling and the natural tooth structure. This is why it is imperative to see us for check-ups at least every 6 months. If we can catch marginal break down from decay early, we can fix your fillings in a conservative manner. If decay goes undetected for a long time, the decay can burrow its way under the filling, which makes for a very large, and potentially expensive, reconstruction process.
If decay goes unnoticed for a long period of time, the decay can reach all the way to the center of the tooth, called the pulp. Once decay enters the pulp, we have a slew of new problems. Pulpal decay means that fillings are no longer a viable option. Patients with decay into the pulp will now need to decide on a root canal or an extraction to fix such severe damage.
If an extraction is required, a dental implant can be used to fill in the space from where the natural tooth was extracted. Hopefully, teeth won’t be neglected to the point where a filling is no longer a viable option and a dental implant is required. However, it is great news to know that dental implants are a great option to fix these problems.
At Shine Dental, we offer what we call assisted benefits! What this means is that you pay for your dental treatment and full, and your insurance company will reimburse you right away! Our administrative staff will be more than happy to send off the claim to your insurance company after the treatment is complete to help with the process. At Shine Dental, we strive for our patient to have all the information they need before accepting a treatment plan with the insurance details.
We offer a few great different payment options and discounts:
· 5% off treatment if paid in full before your treatment date with Cash or Debit
· 3% off treatment if paid in full before your treatment date with Credit Card
· PAYBRIGHT – 3rd party financing option