A Broken Tooth: A Common Dental Emergency

Finding an emergency dentist during the holiday is a difficult task. In this article, we are going to teach you how to handle a broken tooth until visiting your emergency dentist. It helps you reduce their problems. Before starting, I truly appreciate my professor from North York Emergency Dental Clinic that helps us to write this article.

What to do if our tooth breaks?

Although the tooth has a very strong and durable structure, it sometimes cracks or breaks. It can happen in several ways.

Factors that cause teeth to crack or break

– Biting hard materials

– dental traumas

– Falling down

– The presence of tooth decay that has weakened it

– Old or large amalgam (silver) filling that does not support the rest of the enamel.

You may not feel any pain or discomfort when a tooth becomes broken or cracked, but usually, the tongue soon notices a sharp surface in the tooth, which is why you typically notice a broken tooth. A minor tooth fracture usually does not cause pain, but if a large piece of tooth breaks, it may hurt because the nerve inside the tooth may be damaged. Severe discomfort and pain may also occur when nerve endings in the dentin are exposed to air, hot or cold food. You should know pain from a broken or cracked tooth may be persistent or intermittent. Many people experience pain when chewing food because their teeth are under pressure.

What to do when a tooth is damaged?

A chipped or cracked tooth

There is no way to treat chipped or cracked teeth at home. In such emergency cases, you should see an emergency dentist. Sometimes it seems that the teeth do not cause a problem, but it only hurts when you eat something or the temperature of the mouth changes (for example, when you eat cold or hot food). If your tooth is always in pain, its nerve or blood vessels may be damaged. So, this emergency is a serious warning sign. If your teeth do not hurt normally, but when you remove your mouth from the position that teeth come in pairs, you have your probably cracked teeth.

A Fractured Tooth

If your tooth is broken, you have to see an emergency dentist as soon as possible. Your emergency dentist will assess your condition and determine if the fracture is caused by tooth decay and if the tooth nerve is at risk. Damaged nerves usually require emergency care and treatment, endodontic, or root canal therapy.

Do the following tips until visiting your emergency dentist:

-Rinse your mouth with warm water

-Apply gentle pressure to the affected bleeding area with a piece of gauze for 10 minutes or until the bleeding stops. If it does not work, place a tea bag on the affected area to stop the bleeding.

-Use a cold compress on the lips or cheeks on a broken tooth to reduce swelling and pain.

– You should cover the part of the tooth left in the mouth with tooth glue if you cannot visit an emergency dentist right away. You can get it from pharmacies.

-You can take over-the-counter painkillers (such as ibuprofen) to reduce the pain.