Your teeth do the hard work of breaking down and tearing apart the food you eat for easier digestion, and as the first part of that vital journey to keep you healthy, they need to stay healthy themselves. Whether it’s due to injury or diseases like tooth decay, teeth can weaken and eventually fracture, causing problems that affect eating and speech.
Broken teeth are always a concern, but are they considered an emergency, and what should you do when they occur? Let’s further explore the reasons teeth break, what’s considered a dental emergency, and what to do when one comes up.
Dr. Kyle Kern and his experienced staff are here to assist Newberg, Oregon, residents with a range of dental services to improve oral health, including care for broken teeth.
Since your teeth are covered in the strongest material your body produces – enamel – the cracks that appear resulting from damage that creates fractures in it and throughout the underlying tooth material have to be severe. Such causes include:
While some foods have hard outer shells that can be bitten down on without damage, things like ice, hard candies, and popcorn kernels can do a lot more damage than you may think.
Also known as bruxism, this often results from stress, and you may be doing it without realizing it. It can even happen when you’re sleeping, and grinding teeth enough over time can wear them down and cause cracks.
This means tooth damage resulting from an impact to the head that strikes the upper or lower jaw. When this happens, a tooth, or several teeth, can be broken or avulsed (forcibly removed).
Dental trauma can also occur from using your tooth as tools, say to open packages or trim your nails; leave the tool work for actual tools.
The older you get, the weaker your teeth can become, and adults 50 and older are at a higher risk of cracked teeth.
Some treatments for dental problems can weaken teeth, such as fillings after root canals when crowns aren’t applied. These treatments often result from dental problems like tooth decay, which also weaken teeth and can lead to cracked teeth and tooth loss.
Not all cracks are made equally, and you may not notice them at first, depending on the type:
Broadly speaking, a dental emergency occurs when your condition involves uncontrolled bleeding, soft-tissue infection, trauma to the facial bones, or some combination of these issues. Based on this criterion, if one or more teeth are broken from an impact of some sort, it’s considered an emergency if:
Other examples of a broken tooth that needs help as soon as possible include several other issues, such as a dental abscess, broken or lost dental restorations, a partially dislodged tooth, badly cracked teeth, severe toothache, or a knocked-out tooth.
A broken tooth should always get medical attention, but not every broken tooth is an emergency. To find out whether your cracked or broken teeth require emergency help, contact Dr. Kern and his team today.
