<![CDATA[While our teeth are structurally sound if taken proper care of and can easily take years and years of wear and tear, accidents happen and teeth will occasionally break. If you somehow break a tooth due to trauma, injury, or poor dental care, there are some things you’ll want to do to ensure that your mouth stays as healthy as possible. Of course, having a broken tooth will cause obvious cosmetic problems but in some cases breaking a tooth can be a serious emergency that requires immediate care.
When you break a tooth, you’ll know it. Many times breaking a tooth is very painful and can be dangerous to your health if you do not address it properly. There is a wide range of types of breaks that you can suffer from. Some patients only have minor chips to worry about while others are faced with dealing with major fractures. In order to understand the issues involved in breaking a tooth, you’ll want to know the structure of a tooth.
All teeth are made up of enamel, dentin, and the pulp. The enamel is the hard coating of the tooth, the main portion of the tooth is the dentin and the pulp is where the nerves and blood vessels are located. In the event of breaking a tooth it’s important to know how far the break is into the tooth.
In most cases when people break a tooth they just suffer from a chip that takes off some of the tooth’s enamel. Though it can still be painful, just breaking the enamel of your tooth is pretty much a cosmetic issue. When you suffer from a minor tooth chipping, you aren’t in any real danger of losing your tooth but you should seek care from a dentist as soon as possible to see if any dentin was exposed.
Getting To The Root Of The Problem
If enough enamel is broken off, the dentin could become exposed which leads to tooth sensitivity.The worst type of break to suffer from is one that causes the tooth to bleed which more than likely indicates that the break impacted the pulp. In this case, call your dentist ASAP. When the pulp is affected, the nerve tissue within your teeth can become infected. It’s important to wash your mouth using water and to use a cold compress in order to reduce swelling and ease the pain. The safest move in this case is seeking help from your dentist so that your oral health is not impacted and so that the infection does not spread.
When it comes to broken teeth, sometimes replacing the enamel with dental bonding is best fix, however some patients may require a root canal and to have a dental crown and to be permanently placed on the tooth. Others may need a dental implant if the tooth is severely damaged and cannot be repair.
If you have a broken tooth, don’t hesitate to schedule an appointment with Dr. Siegel. He will be able to take the necessary steps in order to try to save your tooth and to protect your oral health. Contact us now!]]>
