A chipped or broken tooth
Most of these do not hurt on the day, which is exactly why so many of them get left.
What this covers
- A chipped edge
- A corner off a front tooth or a cusp off a molar, with no pain and nothing sharp. The least urgent version, and still worth a call in the same week.
- A rough or sharp edge
- Breaks that catch the tongue or the inside of the cheek turn into ulcers within a day or two. That is a same-day call for comfort even when nothing hurts in the tooth itself.
- A crack you can feel on biting
- A tooth that is normal until you chew on it, then gives a sharp jolt. Cracks are the hardest thing on this list to see and the easiest to make worse by waiting.
- A break with pink or red showing
- If the fracture has gone deep enough to expose the middle of the tooth, this is urgent and it will usually announce itself with strong sensitivity to air and cold.
- A tooth broken level with the gum
- The most serious version, and normally the result of a tooth that was already heavily filled. Ring the same day.
What happens, in order
- 01
Rinse gently with warm water
Clears grit out of the area so you can see what you are dealing with. Gently is doing work in that sentence.
- 02
Keep any piece you find
Put it in a clean container. It is not always usable, but it is occasionally exactly what is needed and it costs nothing to bring.
- 03
Look at what is showing
A white or off-white surface is enamel and dentine. Anything pink or bleeding from inside the tooth changes the urgency considerably.
- 04
Call and say which of those it is
Ring (765) 330-8726. Whether it hurts, whether it is sharp, and whether anything pink is visible are the three facts that set the timing.
Why a painless break still counts
Enamel does not grow back and a broken edge does not stabilise on its own. What it does instead is collect plaque in a spot a toothbrush cannot reach properly, and take load in a direction the tooth was not built for. The version of this that gets dealt with in the same week is usually small. The version that gets dealt with six months later is usually not.
Cracks are their own category
A cracked tooth is the one problem on this page that regularly does not show on a radiograph, does not look like anything to the naked eye, and hurts only on a specific bite at a specific angle. That combination makes people doubt themselves and wait. If chewing on one side gives a repeatable jolt, that is worth reporting plainly rather than apologetically.
The one that was already a filling
Most adult tooth fractures happen to teeth that were already restored years ago. A large old filling leaves less tooth around it than the outside suggests, and the break comes on a normal piece of food on a normal day. It is not something you did wrong that afternoon.
Worth knowing
Do not file a sharp edge down yourself
It is a common instinct with a nail file and it removes exactly the enamel that is protecting what is underneath.
Chew on the other side until you are seen
Uncomfortable advice for a few days, and it keeps a small crack from becoming a split.
Temporary dental wax is for edges, not for repairs
It covers a sharp corner so your tongue stops finding it. It is not a fix and it should not delay the call.
A chipped or broken tooth, asked and answered
It does not hurt at all. Is it still an emergency?
Probably not an emergency, and still a call worth making in the same week. Painless breaks are the ones that turn into the expensive version.
I found the piece. Is that useful?
Sometimes, and it is worth bringing either way. Whether it can be used depends on the break, which nobody can judge from a description.
Can superglue hold it until my appointment?
No. Household adhesives are not safe in the mouth and they make the professional repair harder. Leave it and call.
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A knock to the mouth
An elbow, a kerb, a dashboard or a bathroom floor. What matters here is the order you check things in.
Nothing on this page can look at your tooth.
This is general information about a chipped or broken tooth. Whether it is what you have, and whether it can be handled here, are both questions for the call.