The focus on conservative dental treatment is important for many different reasons. When it comes to your comfort and convenience, designing your treatment to be minimally invasive helps make your overall dental treatment easier to manage. In terms of your long-term dental health, conservative treatment means minimizing any changes to your healthy tooth structure to things that are absolutely necessary. Today, we examine what conservative treatment looks like when addressing a common concern such as a cracked tooth, and how we can help you restore and preserve your tooth with optimal results.
The goal in treating tooth damage
Your healthy, natural tooth structure is unique, and not just in its appearance when compared to other people’s teeth. The tissues that make up your tooth structure don’t heal, for example, and it can’t grow any part of itself back if it’s damaged or lost. This makes treating any concern with your teeth especially challenging, as any changes you make in the process will permanently affect the health and integrity of your teeth. For this reason, it’s important to design your restorative dental treatment with the goal of minimizing such alterations, which helps you retain more of the tooth’s structure and its natural strength and integrity.
The severity of your tooth’s crack or fracture
Minimizing the amount of work done to your tooth to fix it is important, but conservative dental treatment is only beneficial if it’s effective. Therefore, the first step in fixing your cracked tooth is to assess the specific extent of the damage and how much of your tooth’s structure it affects. A crack in your tooth can mean a variety of things, from a minor craze line in its surface layer of enamel to a more extensive fracture that impacts most of the tooth’s visible crown. The most appropriate treatment option for restoring your tooth will depend on how severe the damage is, and whether the tooth can be saved or is so extensively damaged that it has to be extracted and replaced.
Choosing the most appropriate solution for it
There is no one-size-fits-all treatment for restoring a tooth, even when the damage is similar to other patients’. That’s because your teeth are unique, and because the extent of your tooth’s crack or fracture will largely guide the selection of your treatment plan. For example, if the crack in your tooth is just a minor craze line, then a minimally invasive cosmetic treatment, like tooth bonding, may be able to successfully improve it. However, more extensive cases of tooth fractures may require a more substantial solution, such as placing a porcelain veneer on the tooth’s surface or a complete dental crown over its entire visible structure.
Learn how we can fix your cracked tooth
Fixing a cracked tooth isn’t just about addressing the damage, but also preserving as much of your healthy, natural tooth structure as possible. To learn more, schedule an appointment with us by calling Dreem Dentistry in Leawood, KS, today at 913-681-5500. We also serve patients who live in Overland Park and all surrounding communities.
