While traditional restorative dentistry from your average St. Louis dentist can provide you with beautiful results, the amount of time these procedures take can also provide quite the hassle. Not only do you often have to visit your dentist multiple times, but you typically have to wait a couple of weeks until your new crowns, inlays or onlays are ready as well. Talk about inconvenient!

Thankfully, when you visit Jeffery Johnson, DDS and Jodi Johnson, DDS in St. Louis for your restorative dentistry, you have an option that is much quicker, easier and more efficient: CEREC restorations.

What is CEREC?

CEREC, which stands for "Chairside Economical Restorations of Esthetic Ceramic," is an exciting new dental technology that allows your St. Louis dentists to perform common restorative dentistry procedures in a fraction of the time by creating the restorations in office during a single appointment. Whether you need fillings, inlays, onlays, crowns or veneers, you no longer have to wait.

How Does CEREC Work?

The CEREC process requires four steps. First, your dentist will examine and clean your teeth to remove any existing decay and assess the damages. Secondly, your dentist will take a picture of your prepared tooth, which will be uploaded to the CEREC machine.

At this point, your dentist would typically send the impressions to the laboratory. With CEREC, however, this step is eliminated completely, saving both you and your dentist time and hassle. Your dentist will use the CEREC machine to create your filling, crown or veneers, and then simply print the new device to the in-office milling machine right then and there. The milling process generally only takes between ten and twenty minutes, and once it is complete, your dentist can attach your new, permanent filling, crown or veneers right then and there.

What Advantage Does CEREC Offer?

The biggest advantages CEREC offers are the amount of time and number of office visits saved. The advantages don't stop there, however. CEREC also requires less drilling, fewer injections, and less tooth loss. You don't have to deal with temporaries, and your doctor has the ability to quickly remake your crowns, fillings and veneers should anything happen to the ones you have.

Don't make several visits to your St. Louis dentist for restorative dentistry over the course of several weeks. Make a visit to see Drs. Johnson and Johnson for a beautiful CEREC restoration you'll be proud to call your own!