Edward J. Zuckerberg, D.D.S., F.A.G.D.

Our office believes strongly in giving back to the community. Recently, I was contacted by the Superintendent at the Graham School in Hastings-On-Hudson regarding a young man that was ready to go off to college and had some confidence issues that resulted from some intrinsic staining in his front teeth that he had ever since the teeth erupted, possibly due to a childhood illness or some antibiotics he was given at an early age. Using Ultradents’ Opalustre enamel microabrasion paste, we were able to painlessly remove a significant portion of the stain without compromising the integrity of the enamel. His big smile afterward was all the compensation we received, but it was more than enough.

Broken cusps on teeth with large, silver amalgam fillings are one of the most common emergencies we see in our office. Even though we haven’t placed an amalgam restoration in 16+ years, many of them exist in our patients mouths and many dentists still place amalgams today. Amalgams do not bond to the remaining tooth and therefore, a large amalgam places a lot of stress on the cusps and remaining walls of the teeth when we chew. For that reason, we strongly prefer bonded composite resin restorations, which help to prevent these kind of fractures, and also release fluoride into the tooth walls making them less likely to decay in the future.
Today’s patient had a typical fracture after biting on a hard candy and the sharp edge was cutting her tongue. Using our in-office cad/cam milling machine, in less than 2 hours we removed the old amalgam and bonded in a super strong inlay/onlay restoration, conserving almost all of her natural tooth structure. This restoration is kinder than a full crown restoration, requiring almost no tooth drilling in this case other than removal of the amalgam, and thanks to our amazing E4D machine, no impressions for labwork were necessary and she went home with her permanent restoration the same day!