A dark tooth is any tooth that has turned near black due to a blood flow problem to the pulp chamber. This problem can happen to both baby teeth and adult teeth. People become very disturbed when they see a dark tooth in their own mouth, or, even worse, in the mouth of their child. In actuality, the problem is much less severe in a child than it is in an adult, and we will see why this is the case in a moment.
To begin with, a dark tooth in a child is almost always caused by some sort of injury to the mouth that knocks the tooth slightly loose. Most of these injuries are the normal bumps and blunders of kids playing around and are never really all that serious. Such a displacement of the tooth can, however, cause a temporary interruption of blood flow that will darken the tooth.
In most cases, though, the tooth eventually tightens back into its socket and the flow of blood returns to normal. The tooth becomes white again. Little if any intervention is necessary. However, we do not want parents who read this to assume that it is ok to simply do nothing if they see a dark tooth in a child's mouth.
Bring your son or daughter to the dentist ASAP and have a full dental examination. The severity of the injury and the damage to surrounding tissue must be assessed in order to determine if observation is the best course of action or if some type of treatment will be needed.
This condition in an adult is a much more serious matter.
Once a dark tooth shows up in the mouth of an adult, the nerve of the tooth has already become infected and the root is probably going to die. In almost all cases a root canal is needed to save the tooth itself. There are exceptions to this. There are always very resilient tooth roots that remain alive in spite of the fact that the adjoining nerves that connect to them wither and die.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to restore the white color of the tooth once it has been properly treated and salvaged. There are several ways that cosmetic dentists do this.
One way is to simply treat a dark tooth with cosmetic dental whitening. This procedure uses a series of bleaching treatments that are applied both in the dentist office and at home.
If the tooth only has a portion of its surface that has turned dark, cosmetic dental bonding resin can be applied to restore normal tooth color.
Another way to solve the problem of a darkened tooth is to use cosmetic dental veneers. These thin porcelain sheets are made to mimic the natural color of surrounding teeth and fit right over the surface of the tooth.
A fourth solution would be to cap the tooth with a cosmetic porcelain crown. Porcelain is a very hard substance and will allow the patient to eat a normal diet and prevent anyone from every knowing they had had a root canal.
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