Given the size I was expecting them to take impressions and make a crown, and have to go back in a couple of weeks to get it fixed, but it turns out that's not the way they do things any more.
The procedure went roughly as follows - I'm undoubtedly misunderstanding or missing some parts of the process that weren't obvious to me in the chair:
- Clean out cavity with the usual drill burr thing.
- Spray interior of cavity with some sort of sealant gunk.
- Harden it with UV light for a few seconds.
- Insert a probe into the cavity (not sure what it was, I think a teeny camera but it might have been sonar) and waggle it around a little.
- Show me a 3D image of the hole on a computer screen and explain that it's going to have to be filled with a ceramic plug. Naturally I asked how long it would take for the plug to be made - answer, it's a CAD-CAM process, they do it in the surgery with some sort of milling machine, and I should go and sit in the waiting room for 15 minutes.
- 15 minutes later, I go back upstairs, he pops some glue into the cavity, inserts the plug, has me bite a few times to get it bedded in, checks that it isn't sticking up too much, and grinds off a couple of places where it's a little too high.