Solutions for Traumatic Tooth Damages
Unfortunately, we see this happen quite often: one of our Warren area dental patients comes to us in an emergency because they have lost or damaged a tooth in an accident or playing sports. When you’ve lost or damaged a tooth in a traumatic manner, you probably already feel upset about the situation, but you are likely also concerned about restoring your smile. A missing or damaged tooth can make you feel self-conscious, so it’s important that we come up with a solution for repairing or replacing your damaged tooth so that your mouth can heal correctly and you won’t feel like your smile is missing something.
Solutions for Chipped Teeth
Chipped teeth are very common. Many people chip their teeth doing mundane things like eating hard foods or playing a sport. Depending on the severity of the damage to your tooth, the repair options can be simple or more complex.
If your tooth has sustained minor damage, meaning you cannot feel any sensitivity to heat, cold or when you breathe through your mouth, the repairs for your chipped tooth could be as simple as reshaping the tooth using a dental tool, or a small amount of resin filler. For these sorts of repairs, you can often wait until you visit our office for a regular check-up.
If you’ve chipped a tooth and you can see obvious damage, have a large portion of the tooth missing and feel that sensitivity to heat, cold and breathing through your mouth, the solutions that we need to undertake are more substantial. That much damage to your tooth may require root canal therapy first to ensure that your tooth will not sustain further damage. Once we’ve completed the root canal therapy, your best repair option may be a crown. A porcelain or resin crown is a perfect repair for your chipped or broken tooth because they not only provide protection that is unnoticeable, but they proved additional support to the damaged tooth.
Solutions for Missing Teeth
If you’ve lost a tooth, and aren’t really sure what to do, we have a couple of options to get your smile looking great again. First, we need to make sure that your jaw and gums are healthy, and that if possible, we can replace the missing tooth. A tooth that has been knocked out, kept in good condition and reset in 30 minutes stands the best chance of reattaching to the jaw. This however is not always possible, so if we need to replace a missing tooth we can either insert an implant or we can create a partial denture, often called a “flipper” that works like a retainer with a replacement tooth attached. Both options will do the job of filling the space in your smile. However, dental implants do provide more support for your jaw, look more natural, and are a permanent option for a missing tooth. We recommend implants for missing teeth, as a better and longer lasting option.
Loosing or damaging a tooth is a real bummer. If you are experiencing the effects of a broken or missing tooth, don’t wait to get it fixed. Waiting too long to repair a chipped or broken tooth can cause damage to your roots, and waiting too long to replace a missing tooth can cause deterioration to the jaw. Dr. Apsey and the team at Smile Brightly have a variety of repair options for our Warren area dental patients. If you need a tooth replaced or repaired, call us today to schedule an appointment.