Dentists/Assists: I have a bunch of mercury in my teeth from when they fixed?

Question

cavaties when I was a kid. I'd like to get them removed and replaced with some white looking stuff. (Whatever that's called) Any idea on how much each tooth would cost, roughly?
Thanks

By amalgums you guys mean the metal ones? I got them around 30 years ago. Does that make a difference in how they were made?
Also, I have no dental insurance. I'd have to pay cash.
Thanks already for the great answers!

Answer 1

It's called composite. And it depends on the tooth. If it's an anterior tooth insurance may cover it. If it's a molar or premolar, it's considered cosmetic and can run about $200-300 per tooth.

Answer 2

While mercury was part of the compound they put in the filling, there is no free floating mercury. It has been incorporated into what is now called an amalgum. These metal fillings are quite neat in that they seal the tubules of the neat quite neatly and have the potential to last for many many years.

While the composites are prettier, there seems to be issues with the longetivity of this material. We are seeing patients in our practice with decay at the bottom of these restorations. The top is nicely sealed, but when you open the tooth, the bottom has started to decay.

I was going to change my amalgums to composite/resin; after seeing some of these cases, I will leave my amalgums alone.

Answer 3

Talk to your dentist, that's the person who knows! If you don't have a dentist, there are often free (or low-cost) dental clinics in many cities where dental students under the supervision of graduate dentists get experience working on people.

I would like to take a moment to address some common misconceptions.

#1) the dental amalgam is not harmful or dangerous. It is not plain mercury but an allow of mercury and other metals, usually gold or silver. They are chemcially bound together and CANNOT dissolve in the mouth to let the mercury into the body. Sure, if you drank liquid mercury, like out of an old thermometer, you'd probably get mercury poisoning, but that's not what we have, here! You couldn't put a powerful enough acid in your mouth or heat your fillings hot enough to vaporize the mercury so that it would be dangerous to you! The heat or acid would kill you first!

#2) All fillings do break down over time. ALL fillings, whether plastic (the white stuff) or amalgam. They do not break down chemically to make you sick, but they break down physically from the incredible pressure of chewing food every day. Also, if we don't take good care of our teeth, brushing them, etc., we can get decay around the edges of a filling leading to uneven pressure, the edges of the filling can crack or chip. This can happen to any kind of filling.

#3) what happens to those chips from fillings...? Generally, they pass through your intestines and out of your body. The thing about metal fillings is that when they wear, they tend to crumble (around the edges, like I said) instead of snapping. Metal breaks differently from plastic, because it hardens differently from plastic. If you remember when they were put in, the dentist smoothed the top of each filling and had you rinse and spit. You spit out little excess bits of amalgam. If you had plastic fillings, the dentist had to harden the plastic (with ultraviolet light) and then scrape off the top to smoothe it. It curls up into rounded bits. So the amalgam is smoothed while it is still soft, the plastic is smoothed after it is hardened. Have you ever tried to scrape hard plastic...? You get sharp little chips.

My point is that the metal bits are less likely to hurt your intestines than the plastic chips are. It is not very likely in either case, or nobody would use them. But I am more inclined to trust metal than plastic.

#4) Finally, what if you swallowed a big chunk of metal, from an old filling? Let's compare it to plastic. Metal stops x-rays a lot more easily than plastic does. Metal shows up on an x-ray better than plastic does. If you swallow a piece of metal and a piece of plastic, they will be able to find and remove the metal a lot more easily.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to replace metal fillings if they are visible and detract from your appearance, but many people feel overly sensitive about them.

Although fillings will sometimes break down over a long time (as I described earlier) and need to be replaced, no reputable dentist is going to replace stable fillings with new ones because the process of replacing them requires drilling which makes the hole in the tooth larger. You can only replace them so many times before there is no more tooth material left and the tooth must be pulled! Then you need bridgework or dentures.

As far as the cost, it may vary depending on the cost of living in your area, but replacing a filling is the same work, usually the same price as putting in the filling in the first place.

For actual prices, talk to a dentist. That's your best bet. Ask him if I'm wrong.

18 AUG 07, 1527 hrs, GMT.