Life can take unexpected turns, and sometimes those turns can hurt. Whether it was a slip and fall, a sports injury, or just a particularly and surprisingly crunchy bit of food that did it, the good news is that figuring out where to fix a broken tooth in Clayton Park is the easy part. Dedicated dental professionals in Halifax are waiting to accept new patients all the time, and they’ll put their hard-earned expertise to work getting your smile back up to snuff as soon as possible. More complicated is how exactly they will end up doing that. The specific dental injury treatment plan that you and your dentist agree upon will depend on a variety of factors. Mainly, though, it will depend on the nature and severity of your broken tooth or teeth. A host of treatment options exist, and having a sense of them in advance will put you on firmer ground if the unfortunate circumstance of you needing them should ever come to pass.

Different Causes

It wouldn’t make any sense to treat a sprained ankle the same as a compound femur fracture, and likewise, different tooth injuries require different treatment approaches. It’s easy to know that you need to get yourself to a dentist’s office if a runaway fastball breaks one of your teeth in half. If the pain doesn’t let you know, one look in the mirror will. Sometimes, though, a tooth can develop the equivalent of a hairline fracture, and knowing when you have a cracked tooth is often not as easy as it sounds. You might think that it would be painful enough to be obvious, and sometimes it can be, but it can also happen that your fractured tooth only hurts when you eat or drink something especially hot or cold, or sometimes when you chew with just the right (or wrong!) amount of force. If these symptoms are happening and you’re experiencing intermittent tooth pain while eating, the best course of action is to find a local dentist that is either accepting new patients or provides emergency dental services and make an appointment.

Different Treatments

Once you’re in the dentist’s chair, the two of you can examine not only your injured tooth, but also your treatment options. If you have a small tooth fracture that is causing sporadic pain, the treatment recommended by your dentist will likely be very different than if you have a big chunk of tooth that’s missing entirely. For some injuries, dental bonding is the answer. Your dentist will use a composite resin on a small section of your tooth to build it back up again and make it good as new. In other cases, a full veneer might be necessary and appropriate. A veneer is a full-tooth covering procedure that either relies on composite resin or custom-made porcelain fittings that restore your whole teeth to a healthy, bright state. These are also used in cosmetic dentistry for people who don’t have a specific injury, but who would just like to have a brighter, whiter smile. If you still have the piece that was knocked out, your dentist can sometimes put it back and use a strong adhesive to hold it in its original place. More serious cases might require a crown to cover what’s left of the original tooth to prevent further damage or decay.

Whatever the treatment that you and your dentist decide on, the first step is finding out where to fix broken teeth in Clayton Park, placing that call and getting yourself checked out by a dedicated and experienced professional.