The main purpose of making porcelain filling (inlay, onlays); to prevent a tooth with too much substance loss from being broken when restored with a normal filling (composite or amalgam). A tooth with excessive substance loss; usually decreases and more important than the remaining solid walls after being subjected to procedures such as canal treatment or excessive caries removal. Coarse composite or amalgam fillers that load shrinkage stress on these weakened walls as they harden or do not provide the same flexural strength cannot provide sufficient support. Porcelain fillings (inlays, onlays), on the other hand, are made by placing a filling material prepared according to that space after measuring the cavity of the tooth and this passive fit does not create stress for the walls of the tooth.

If your dentist uses the term “inlay” when he technically wants to classify the porcelain filling, this tells us that the porcelain filling has solid tooth walls around the inlay and the inlay filling has settled in a cavity between these solid walls. If your dentist uses the term “onlay”, then you should know that the porcelain filling will restore the deficiency of one or more walls of the tooth and take a larger place.

Apart from this, as a more current concept today; In particular, porcelain fillings are made covering the entire chewing surface of the tooth called “overlay”, which is applied to prevent the fractures of the canal treated teeth from being exposed to great stress under the chewing forces but also to keep the teeth in the mouth without making porcelain crowns (coating). In the preparation of the tooth, instead of onlay filling, our choice of restoration in the style of overlay; it means that the tooth will transfer all chewing forces to the restoration, that is, to the material used.

Lastly, a molar tooth called “tabletop”, which functions as a chewing function, is a restoration applied to increase the vertical size or to resist chewing surfaces of teeth lost due to erosion due to erosion caused by clenching, hard tooth brushing, acidic food consumption. These have often found their place in modern dentistry because of the very successful results of adhesive applications for years. The biggest advantage is to provide dentists with treatment with tabletop restorations that sit like a “hat” with a small touch instead of making a female porcelain crown (coating) to restore a fallen vertical dimension or to restore the function of a tooth with a chewing surface. Although it is called as porcelain filling, e.max porcelains are the most frequently used material in the dentistry literature in this type of tabletop restorations, but hybrid ceramics are among the most frequently used materials due to the ease of application and its adaptation to chewing later.