What exactly is Dental decay and Cavities?
A Dental tooth “cavity” is the term used for when teeth suffer irreversible loss by decay (hole) that usually needs some form of “filling” or restoration to seal the hole from further decay. How do I know if I need a filling? If you know you need a filling, then it is usually a large problem (That you feel with your tongue)rather than a smaller (early) one. Sometimes cavities that have “eaten” enough tooth away can show up on X-rays as dark holes. Because teeth are so “dense” they often mask early holes starting in teeth from the X-rays, just like metal fillings can hide decay and only appears on X-rays when it gets deeper under the filling – but by then it is often a medium or large sized hole, needing a much larger filling than if it had been detected earlier. Also, once a tooth has a “large” filling in it, all future replacement fillings can only get even larger (never smaller!), thus often needing future Crown work or root-treatment, which is not only more complex and expensive, bu
