If you fracture your arm, you would head straight to the ER, wouldn't you? If you fracture your tooth, you need immediate emergency dental care for the best chance of saving the tooth. There are a number of different treatment methods, but it depends on how seriously your tooth is fractured.
Mild Fractures
A chipped tooth isn't all that severe, but it still needs prompt treatment. Your dentist will assess the amount of tooth that has been lost, but in most cases, it can be quickly fixed using dental bonding. This means the dentist will reconstruct the tooth to return it to its former shape using a composite resin the same color as your other teeth. It's applied to your tooth, shaped, and dried. This should be the end of the matter for a mild fracture.
Moderate Fractures
When the tooth has been loosened in the socket, usually accompanied by bleeding, your dentist will act quickly to prevent the loss of the tooth. In some instances, an immediate root canal is required, and the tooth is then bonded to its neighbors to hold it in place while its root system heals and stabilizes. This is known as tooth splinting, and the bonding agent will be removed at a later stage. When the tooth's internal nerve (the dental pulp) is unaffected and a root canal is not necessary, your dentist will simply splint the tooth and schedule a follow-up appointment in the near future to assess how well the tooth is stabilizing. Sometimes a root canal is still required at one of these follow-up appointments, when damage to the dental pulp hinders the tooth's ability to stabilize itself.
Serious Fractures
A fracture is far more serious when it extends vertically along the tooth, from its tip to beneath the gum line. When the root itself is fractured, it might not be possible to save the tooth using splinting and other restoration measures. Unfortunately, extraction of the fractured tooth might be unavoidable. Appropriate pain relief will be given, and the damaged tooth will be removed. A single prosthetic tooth attached to a denture base can hide the gap as a short term solution, but you will need to consider your options for permanent replacement. This can involve a dental implant or even a dental bridge, which is when a prosthetic tooth is bonded to the adjacent, natural teeth.
A fractured tooth can be quite serious, but you often won't know how serious it is until you seek emergency dental treatment, which you should do immediately.
Share13 October 2020
