So many people come to the dentist seeking to have a chipped tooth fixed that it has become a money maker for dentists, says Dr. Bart Kreiner, who runs his own dental practice, Dr. Kreiner Family Dentistry, in Bel Air, Maryland. The unfortunate thing, though, is that so many accidents resulting in chipped teeth could so easily have been avoided.
Fixing a chipped tooth is not a case of one size fits all. Depending upon the severity of the chip, it could be as easy as adding tooth-colored plastic restoration or could be as complicated as requiring a four-by-four crown, which is our way of saying a full-coverage crown.
Chipped teeth come from a variety of sources. In the pediatric population, generally the number-one cause is from face-first falls. Playing recreational sports such as soccer, basketball appear to be or are thought to be non-contact sports generally speaking; thus mouthguards are not required. But since a ball or an elbow often hits a child in the face, usually the largest cause of a chipped tooth is physical trauma.
Chewing Ice and Popcorn
Other ways teeth get chipped is through chewing ice. Chewing ice freezes the enamel on the surface of the tooth, which makes anything frozen become brittle, allowing the tooth to break.
Popcorn is also a great chipper of teeth because people will inadvertently chomp down on an unpopped kernel. And hard candies are supposed to be sucked on, but invariably we chew and break them into pieces, so that the hardness of the candies causes chipping and breakage of teeth.
Bad Chips Mean Extraction
Sometimes we have to extract a tooth because it is so badly chipped. In 20 years, I have had to extract two perfectly virgin teeth that broke vertically though they had no decay or restoration. That made them non-restorable, and the cause, I believe, was an ice chewer.
Believe it or not, both teeth that had to be extracted because of chewing ice were from the same patient, at two different times, three years apart. And she did not have soft teeth either; she had normal teeth and actually had fillings on the other teeth but they did not break. The ones that did had no decay or fillings, so I would advise people not to chew ice, and to carefully eat popcorn and other hard substances such as hard candies.
The information in the article is not intended to substitute for the medical expertise and advice of your healthcare provider. We encourage you to discuss any decisions about treatment or care with an appropriate healthcare provider.
