Cracked Tooth Syndrome at Warren Dental Office
Hi, I’m Dr. Greg Apsey here in Warren, Michigan. I’d like to speak with you today about something that happens on a fairly regular basis. It’s called Cracked Tooth Syndrome, an we call it a syndrome, because, it’s something that’s sometimes not real obvious. Not that easy to detect- It generally presents as a toothache that comes and goes usually when a person is eating, chewing their food, they’re noticing an ache as they chew the food. Maybe it’s hurting after the meal; maybe it’s not even hurting during the meal. It’s often caused by heavy clenching of the teeth. A lot of people have this problem where they, you know, either while driving or while working or while sleeping. A lot of times while sleeping they will put their teeth together and just squeeze very firmly. And what we find is at night time those forces can be tremendous. And so a, a perfectly good molar tooth can be split in half. So, I want to show you a picture here of a patient, who I saw just today, and we intend to do a routine filling. This is where there was some decay and we’ve cleaned out the decay. But, he has been complaining of some discomfort and there was a little minor decay in here, we fixed, we cleaned that out, we are getting ready to fill this. Now, as I was cleaning this tooth, my light was hitting this tooth and just the right way I could see, you can see this dark line down the middle of the tooth and the last time I saw him this just looked like normal anatomy. But in reality this right here is where the tooth is fractured.
What we ended up doing in this case was, we’re going to be putting a crown on the tooth to hold the tooth together. The problem is that it’s very difficult to diagnose how deep into the structure this fracture goes. But we want to do, when a tooth begins to fracture, is we want to catch it early. We want to treat it before that fracture is deep enough that it’s into the nerve or really doing some major damage to the tooth. So right now, this patient is in a temporary crown. What the crown does, it encircles the tooth, holds the tooth together with, right now it’s a temporary, so it’s plastic, but it will be porcelain, or Gold. What it does, it holds the tooth together and prevents it from splitting completely apart. So, we’re testing this out with him. He’s got the temporary crown in, and we’re going to see how he does. There is a fairly good chance that little crack in his, otherwise perfect tooth may be so deep that the tooth has to be extracted. So if you notice that you’re having discomfort on biting, pressure, or discomfort during meals, you’ve got to get that checked out. There’s a good chance you’ve got cracked tooth, syndrome.
Thanks for listening. Have a good day.
Cracked Tooth Syndrome at Warren Dental Office
If you have questions regarding cracked tooth syndrome or would like to make an appointment at our Warren, MI office, please call (586) 573-7700.