Blog

A chipped tooth used to mean an extracted one, as did a fractured or cracked tooth. These days your dentist has all the means at their disposal to repair and save the tooth says a City of London dentist. Cosmetic Bonding is one solution; this brilliantly versatile material is generally used to fix veneers to the front of damaged teeth. However, with the availability of colouration the bonding can now be mixed and used much the same as Poly Filler is used by plasterers. Not only does it keep cracked teeth together and prevent further cracking, it also blends and dries so it can be ground to look natural and hide the seam, so to speak. With a chipped tooth it can replace the lost enamel and be sculptured to make the tooth look as good as new. It is a hard wearing material and should outlast the tooth. For teeth that need more to hide the damage, a veneer is the solution. This is a thin coating of porcelain formed to the shape of the front of a tooth; this is cemented onto the tooth to hide the chip, crack or discolouration. In some cases it can cover over a misaligned tooth and make the line of teeth appear straight. Your dentist has at his disposal many tricks of the trade that can now be used to save teeth, in the not too distant past these teeth would have been extracted, and a false denture would have replaced them. Thicker veneers are used in cases where the damage to a tooth goes deeper, but they require their depth to be skimmed off the tooth before they can be fitted. See your dentist in the first instance to see what they can to save a damaged tooth.