You can sustain a cracked tooth more easily than you may realise. If you’ve ever accidentally bitten your tongue while eating, you can likely appreciate how much biting power our teeth actually have. Note that you can never replicate this same level of force when you bite down on your tongue deliberately!

When primal instincts override conscious chewing, our teeth can tear through almost anything we throw at them — but there can be limits. Have you ever bitten down on an extraneous seed in your muesli or perhaps an unpopped corn kernel? Have you experienced dental trauma or bruxism (the condition where you involuntarily grind your teeth — usually in your sleep)? Or have you just been choosing particularly chewy foods lately? All of these experiences can contribute to or cause dental cracking.

If you suspect you may have a cracked tooth, there are treatment options available — and it’s essential to look into these before the crack progresses further. However, before we explore these options, let’s review some of the symptoms of cracked teeth.

Symptoms of a Cracked Tooth

Painful Biting & Chewing

If you have a cracked tooth, you won’t know it until you bite down on it. The pain will not be dull and persistent but sharp and localised to the problem area. When your tooth cracks, pressure disturbs its unstable pieces, potentially irritating its pulp. Painful biting and chewing are perhaps the most common signs you need emergency dental care.

Temperature Sensitivity

When your tooth is cracked, hot food, frozen desserts, or ice-cold drinks will trigger sharp pain. This is because the nerve inside the tooth is more exposed to sudden temperature changes. While temperature sensitivity can indicate tooth decay rather than cracks specifically, it’s almost always a sign that something isn’t right.

Gum Inflammation

If your tooth is cracked and irritated, it could have a knock-on effect on its nearest neighbour: the gums. They may swell or become tender around the site of the crack, and you may especially notice this when you touch or brush around the area.

Treatment Options

How is a cracked tooth treated? There are four options: dental bonding, dental crowns, root canal treatment, and tooth extraction (as a last resort). Let’s review each one and see what suits your situation.

Dental Bonding: Best for Minor Cracks

If you’ve only sustained a small crack, tooth bonding is an excellent course of action. In these more minor cases, tooth pulp remains unaffected, and there is no infection to treat, so you only need a cosmetic solution. Dental or tooth bonding utilises composite resin to repair cracks, resolve gaps, or alter tooth shape or colour. It involves a series of simple steps:

• Colour-matching resin to your tooth’s natural colour
• Preparing your tooth’s surface by roughening it and applying a conditioned, adhesive liquid to it
• Applying resin to your tooth’s surface, moulding it into the correct shape and smoothing it over
• Curing the resin using a UV light, which bonds the material to your tooth’s surface
• Shaping and polishing the tooth until it looks natural.

Dental Crowns: Protecting Teeth Long-Term

Do you need a crown for a cracked tooth? Not necessarily, but it’s one of the most common cracked tooth treatment options available — it can be great for cosmetic fixes or the perfect way to cap off root canal treatment. In a nutshell, a dental crown is a prosthetic tooth designed to fit over a natural one — usually for restorative purposes but can also enhance aesthetics. It’s usually made from porcelain or composite resin, providing a sturdy foundation to hold the tooth together and prevent its crack’s flexure.

Root Canal Treatment: Necessary for Deeper Cracks Affecting the Pulp

Root canal treatment may be the best course of action if your cracked tooth has resulted in an infection or inflamed tooth pulp. It’s not a pleasant procedure, but it’s the next best thing to tooth extraction. Your dentist will create a hole at the top of your tooth to remove the infected pulp; from there, they will shape, irrigate, and decontaminate your now-empty tooth canal, preparing it for a gutta-percha filling. Once your tooth is full of rubbery gutta-percha, your dentist will seal it off with dental cement, usually covering it with a dental crown for stability.

Extraction: When the Tooth Is Beyond Saving

In a worst-case scenario, the crack will run so deep that not even root canal treatment can rectify it. The crack may extend from the surface to the root, splitting the tooth in two; this can also be a sign of cracked tooth syndrome. If you have to resort to tooth extraction, this doesn’t necessarily need to leave a gaping hole. You can literally bridge the gap with a dental bridge, or replace your tooth — roots and all — with a dental implant.

Benefits of Early Intervention

Can a cracked tooth heal on its own? Unfortunately, no, which is why it’s important to treat your cracked tooth sooner rather than later. Your tooth will flex each time you bite down, which will open and close the crack — causing pain and exacerbating the damage. The sooner you receive emergency dental care, the less damage you’re dealing with — a stitch in time saves nine.

If you attend to the tooth early enough, you can stop the crack from progressing beyond surface level with dental bonding or a crown. Leave it too late, and the crack may cause irreversible nerve damage, at which point you’re looking at a root canal at best and extraction at worst.

Potential Complications of Untreated Cracked Teeth

What happens if a cracked tooth is left untreated? It can lead to severe pain and tooth sensitivity, gum swelling or tenderness, a heightened risk of an oral infection, and even tooth loss. For instance, what may begin as a slightly uncomfortable chip can progress to an extremely painful fracture. Because a cracked tooth leaves nerves and blood vessels exposed, bacteria will inevitably accumulate in all these nooks and crannies, causing gums to swell — a sign of an oral infection.

Once an infection breaks out, you may develop a dental abscess — or the infection may spread to other parts of your mouth or body. When the damage reaches this stage, your tooth root may no longer be able to provide a sturdy foundation for your tooth. We would recommend emergency dental care involving tooth extraction.

Get to Langmore — Before the Cracks Begin to Show

If you suspect a crack is forming in your tooth, don’t delay — book your appointment with our best dentist in Berwick at Langmore Dental today. We can stop cracks in their tracks with restorative dental crowns, and resolve infections with root canal treatment. However unpleasant the procedures may be, they can save teeth from irreversible damage and infection.