If it has ever happened to you, then you would know it for what it is. Usually, it happens as you are happily munching on your favorite snack – maybe a nut or something tough and hard – and you bite down hard, hoping your ever-reliable teeth do the justice. However, to your utter dismay, you hear a crushing and snapping sound, and you already know it is not all from the food. Then the tell tale signs – little white specks in your mouth, sand-like, telling you that a portion of your teeth has been reduced to shards.
There are three basic ways by which this unfortunate incident can occur. The first and mildest is when the fracture of the tooth only passes through the enamel and the dentine of the tooth. In this case, a simple restoration job can be done on it. If the fracture happened at the back of the tooth, then you just need to have a crown over the tooth. However, in some cases a reasonable chunk of the tooth might have gotten disintegrated in the process, and the vacuum left cannot be filled only with the crown. In a case like this, you will have to have a core – a framework over which the final crown will rest – done to fill up and stand for the mission tooth fragment.
However, in some other cases, your tooth fracture could have gotten worse than just the simple dentine and enamel fracture. In this case, the crack extends down to the pulp. Why this is not good, is that the pulp is supposed to be protected from the outside environment at all costs and any exposure to the mouth itself subjects the pulp to the risk of contamination. If this happens, you will have to go for immediate root canal therapy to restore the state of sterility of the tooth. If this not done, you might have to face the problems of a bacteria-infested pulp which might result in the pulp tissue dying. It is not a pleasant experience to say the least as you will begin to experience various pains in your tooth and the discomfort will be palpable. Necrotic pulp tissue is usually responsible for abscesses in the jaw line and they can be quite a bother.
The final and most disastrous way a tooth can fracture is when it extends down to the jaw bone itself. This means that the tooth itself will have to be extracted. Mercifully, most times it does not come to that if you have been having your regular checkup with the dentist before then, as they can spot the beginning of a crack and check it in time.
Here are some questions you can ask your cosmetic dentist in the event of a crack:
Is it possible to recover my tooth’s original structure?
Will it be necessary for me to undergo root canal therapy?
Will I need a core before a crown?
Is filling just enough to restore my tooth?