Cracked Tooth Syndrome

What is cracked tooth syndrome?

Cracked tooth syndrome is a term that describes recurring discomfort, sensitivity, or pain that is caused by an incomplete fracture or crack in a tooth. The fracture involved in cracked tooth syndrome is often difficult to detect and may be completely invisible to the naked eye. It may not even appear on an x-ray.

How do teeth crack?

As your teeth age, they may lose some of their original strength. Clenching and grinding, for instance, can weaken teeth. Large fillings and root canal treatment can also cause your teeth to lose strength and make them brittle. Every day, your teeth endure a tremendous amount of pressure from biting and chewing, so if you bite down on a hard object like a piece of ice or a popcorn kernel, the force can sometimes cause a tooth to crack, especially if it's already weakened.

Symptoms of cracked tooth syndrome

You may have cracked tooth syndrome if:

you find yourself chewing on only one side of your mouth because it's uncomfortable to chew on the other side;
your teeth are sensitive to hot or cold temperatures, or to sweet or sour foods;
you feel a sharp pain when you bite down;
or the pain you feel is intermittent, rather than constant.

Layers of a tooth

Infected pulp

Infection spreads

Root Canal Diagnosis

How did my tooth become infected?

The visible, exterior layer of a tooth is called the enamel. Beneath the enamel is another hard layer, called the dentin. The dentin surrounds a small chamber at the center of the tooth that contains the pulp. Tooth pulp is a soft tissue made up of nerves, arteries, and veins. The pulp extends from the pulp chamber down through narrow channels, called the root canals, to the tips of the roots.

The two most common causes of infection in the pulp are deep cavities and fractures or broken teeth. Both expose the pulp to bacteria that live in saliva. These bacteria, which are always present in your mouth, can cause an infection that can kill the pulp. Without treatment, the pus from the infection can eventually gather down at the root tip and pass into the jaw bone, causing an abscess (a pus pocket). The abscess can then damage the bone that surrounds the tooth. The resulting pressure inside the bone and ligaments surrounding the tooth can cause excruciating pain, and left untreated, can even be life threatening.

Symptoms vary

You may have realized that you had an infected tooth because it was sensitive to hot and cold, was swollen and painful, or had given you a bad taste in your mouth. On the other hand, you may have been completely unaware that you had an infection because you experienced no symptoms at all.

Root canal therapy

An infected tooth will never heal on its own, and as it gets worse, it will continue to be a source of infection that depletes your immune system, which can affect your entire body. Years ago, your only option would be for us to extract the tooth. But today, we can remove the infection with root canal therapy, and save your tooth.

Layers of a tooth

A file removes infection

We may remove your crown

Why a Crowned Tooth May Need a Root Canal

Why does my crowned tooth need a root canal?

A crown restores a tooth that has been seriously damaged. While the crown protects the outside of a tooth, it can't protect the soft inner layer called the pulp, which contains the tooth's nerves, veins and arteries. In some cases, the initial damage repaired by the crown may have spread from the hard exterior of the tooth to the soft inner pulp chamber. In other cases, a crowned tooth can sustain damage that affects the pulp. And occasionally, the pulp of a crowned tooth becomes damaged or infected for reasons we cannot pinpoint. In any case, when the tooth pulp becomes damaged, it becomes vulnerable to infection from bacteria that are normally present in your mouth. If a crown covers a tooth that has an infected pulp chamber, we must remove the infection by performing root canal treatment on the crowned tooth.

Why root canal treatment?

We understand that some patients have anxiety about root canal treatment, but we want to assure you that it will be comfortable for you. Treatment is, in fact, the most comfortable option, because a tooth with an infection in the pulp chamber will never heal on its own. The unpleasant consequences of infection will worsen and become more painful with time, and may even spread throughout your body.

The procedure

Because your comfort is important to us, we'll make sure your mouth is thoroughly numb before we begin. Next, we'll place a rubber dam around the infected tooth to isolate it from the rest of your mouth. The rubber dam keeps the tooth dry and accessible for us and prevents anything from falling to the back of your throat.

To get to the infected tooth pulp, we'll make an opening through the top of the crown down into the pulp chamber. In some cases, we may have to remove the entire crown in order to access the pulp chamber. We'll then use a tiny tool called a dental file to carefully remove the infected tissue and shape the root canals to receive a filling material.

At this point, we may take X-rays to be sure that all of the infected pulp is removed. We then fill the root canals with a restorative material. Then we'll fill the hole in your crown with a restorative material or, if we've removed the crown, we'll take steps to create a new crown.

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