While your teeth are incredibly hard, there are rare instances where an accidental blow to the face or a hard fall can impact a tooth so hard that it severely cracks, fractures or damages the tooth. The pain associated with a severely damaged tooth can sometimes be extreme. If the damage is too extensive to be repaired by a root canal, your Tatum & Cox dentist might recommend completely extracting the tooth.
Once your gums have healed, we can use restorative dentistry techniques to install a dental implant with a crown.
We start the process of restoring the broken tooth with a thorough examination and X-rays. This gives us a detailed understand or the overall health of your mouth as well as the available bone structure. If the knocked out tooth resulted in a loss of bone structure, we might recommend that you receive a bone graft in that part of the jaw to restore sufficient jaw structure to mount an implant.
Dental implants are installed in a single outpatient appointment requiring deep sedation. So you will need to arrange for a friend or family member to drive you and help you at home, until you’re back on your feet.
To install the dental implant one of Tatum & Cox’s oral surgeons will make a small incision in your gums to gain direct access to the underlying bone. A narrow channel is drilled into the bone and a titanium abutment is screwed into place. Titanium is known to be biologically safe and will eventually fuse to your bones to create a very strong anchor.
Once your gums have healed and the titanium abutment has fused in place, we can start the process of installing a standard crown.
If you have a broken, damaged or otherwise painful tooth, you should call Tatum & Cox’s clinic in Opelika, Alabama at 334-745-6393 for immediate treatment. We are dedicated to helping your resolve this serious problem in a timely fashion.