4 Signs You May Have a Cracked Filling

What Causes a Filling to Crack?

A filling material that most dentists and patients prefer these days is composite resin. While it’s quite durable, it may chip or crack at some point if:

• You bite something too hard, which puts excessive pressure on the tooth.
• You had a direct blow to your tooth due to a sports injury or fall.
• There’s decay or a fracture in the tooth with the filling.
• You have the habit of grinding your teeth at night.

Sometimes, it’s simply due to wear over time, which means you may need to have your dentist repair or replace it.

How to Tell If You Have a Cracked Filling?

Your tooth filling is meant to protect your inner tooth structure. If it cracks, breaks, or falls out, you’ll experience different symptoms along with discomfort.

Your tooth feels sensitive

That’s usually one of the first signs. When there’s a crack in your filling, some part of your inner tooth can get exposed. As a result, you’ll likely have that tingling sensation whenever you eat something hot or cold.

There’s pain when biting

Sometimes, you may not feel any pain unless you bite down. That could be because your tooth filling cracked.

The crack makes your tooth more sensitive to pressure, so you’ll have pain when biting down, but it will get better when you relieve that pressure.

Feeling a crack or dent with your tongue

You may feel that there’s a hole, sharp edge, or dent in your filling that wasn’t there before when you sweep your tongue over it.

You may hear the crack

In some cases, when a filling cracks too suddenly because of biting something too hard, you may hear a sharp sound as it happens.

You might even notice a piece of your filling has broken or fallen out.

What are the Treatment Options for a Cracked Filling?

As soon as you notice you have a cracked filling, reach out to your dentist. It may not look like a big issue at first, but may become problematic later on. Depending on how deep the crack is, your dentist will consider the best options. In most cases, replacing the old filling with a new one solves the issue.

But if the damage is so serious that it reaches your pulp, your dentist may perform a root canal first, and then later cover your tooth with a crown.