Now my tongue can't resist the new filling.
![[Comments]](/nb//themes/Default/comments.png "3 comments")
(3) Wed Aug 04 2004 14:22 Dentadventure:
Today I had one of my teeth fixed by a new(ish) German method. The dentist drilled out the old filling and the new cavity, leaving a horrifyingly jagged shell of a molar which my tongue of course couldn't resist. He took a digital picture of the tooth, cropped the surrounding teeth out of the picture, and then used some fancy software to transform the picture into a virtual 3-D image of the tooth. Then, using the trackball on the computer, he outlined the area that was to be filled with porcelain. The computer sent the info to a milling machine, which lathed out a block of porcelain in the exact shape and size of the hole. Then the dentist basically bonded the patch in with Krazy Glue. He says only about 4 to 5% of dentists have this equipment. It surely was interesting to watch. I got to go into the other room and see the little machine drilling out a crown for my tooth.