Why use precious metal alloys rather than non-precious alloys?
For the last century or so the first stage of treating a decayed tooth has involved ‘drill and fill’ procedures: the decay within a tooth is cleaned out by drilling and the tooth ‘restored’ by filling the clean cavity with a mercury based amalgam or more recently with a non-metallic filler. However after several such treatments the tooth can no longer be repaired by this technique and more radical restorative procedures are necessary. The dentist must now prepare a clean tooth stub that can be capped or crowned with a tailor-made metal crown manufactured by a dental technician using specialised processes. A bridge is formed when two or more adjacent teeth are to be restored by this means. The alloys used to produce these restorations are crown and bridge alloys. Since the late 1970s, palladium has been a key metal used worldwide by the dental industry in the development of alloys for the manufacture of crown and bridge restorations constructed by dental technicians. The price of pallad
