Can you have half a tooth filled?

I have a tooth, it is next to the incisor not sure on the term. where it had two “prongs” and one prong had a cavity which lead to said prong breaking into bits and falling off.

So now there is one prong left, the front facing prong, and the back facing one is gone with just a cavity broken space there.

I’d like for the dentist I’m going to to just drill and put a filling there, leaving the front prong alone so cosmetically it would look fine. I’m asking if this is possible because I’d like to know going in in case they try to sell me on more expensive treatment like filing to a post and doing a cap etc.

I have a molar that had two large fillings when I was young, and eventually cracked and broke. I was braced for yet another crown, as my childhood dentist was of the drill-big school, but my current doc managed a very clever keyed inlay that preserved most of the tooth structure.

So ask what can be done to preserve as much of your natural tooth as possible. It may take more than a filling.

dentist here. The only tooth next to an incisor is a canine. These are large teeth with a single cusp(prong?). Next to them are the premolars, they tend to have two cusps, one toward the cheek and one toward the tongue. I suspect this is the tooth in question.

As a general rule if the tooth loss is from decay than the decay extends further into the tooth than just the part that is missing. In restoring a tooth with a filling there has to be enough tooth to hold the filling in place. If half the tooth is missing that is not a likely situation. Often though it is of course possible to put a crown(cap) on the tooth. These can be made to look like teeth.

In my mind if you believe the dentist you are going to is trying to do treatment that is unnecessary then you should go somewhere else. That being said the fact that you don’t want to pay for a crown doesn’t mean the tooth could just be filled. With the little I have to go on I’d say a crown is probably in order.