Worn and broken teeth can happen for a number of reasons. Are you struggling with cracked, chipped, broken, or worn down teeth? Dr. Shawna Hoffert, a dentist in Asheville, NC at Red Maple Dental, discusses the reasons for these dental issues and what you can do about them.
Trauma or Injury
One of the most common ways to break a tooth is due to trauma or injury. There can be various levels of breaking depending on what the injury was. There’s a chance that emergency dentistry services will need to be utilized. This can lead to everything from a small cosmetic chip to a tooth breaking in half.
Bite Imbalance
If you have consistently broken teeth or see a lot of wear and tear, it may be due to a bite imbalance. Your teeth or jaw joints may be misaligned, causing the teeth to hit at inconvenient points. This causes irregular wear or breakage on your teeth. The only signs of a bite imbalance could be just worn or regularly broken teeth.
Treatment for Broken Teeth
If your teeth are broken due to an injury, Dr. Hoffert will choose the right restoration for the severity of the break. This could include dental bonding for more cosmetic injuries, as the malleable material can easily be shaped to fix a small chip or crack. For more severe breakage, something like a dental crown may be needed. A crown can cover the entire outside of your tooth, making it like new!
However, if you have consistently broken or worn teeth, Dr. Hoffert will need to do a full evaluation. This is a sign that there’s definitely an underlying problem that needs taken care of so this can be resolved. She still may do options like dental bonding or a dental crown, but it’s important to prevent it from continuing to happen.
Dr. Hoffert will study the cause of your bite misalignment. She’ll determine whether it’s caused by your jaw joints or the teeth themselves. This helps her develop a personalized treatment plan to move forward so that we can address your specific condition.
Your personalized treatment plan may involve any number of things, depending on the diagnosis and your specific symptoms. Dr. Hoffert may need to refer you to a local orthodontist if the problem resides in the jaw. Orthodontic devices can help shift both the teeth and the actual alignment of your jaw to a place where they’ll come together properly.
If the problem focuses on the teeth, Dr. Hoffert may perform what’s called bite equilibration. This involves reshaping your teeth so that they aren’t hitting in awkward positions. This could be what’s causing the chips and wear. Teeth are ideally all supposed to make contact at the same time, with the same force. When this isn’t happening, that’s when your problems can occur, as the force is unevenly distributed throughout the jaw.
Restorative Treatment at Your Asheville, North Carolina Dentist
Are you ready to get treatment for the wear and cracks in your teeth? Call us today or schedule an appointment online to get started!