Got a cracked tooth? Well, it is a very commonly encountered complaint in dental practice. Biting onto hard food items of a sudden fall can result in a crooked tooth. Depending on the severity of the damage, there are various treatment options available for the treatment of such teeth. Let us have a look at the top 5 options:

Types of cracked teeth and their management

1. Craze Lines: These are present in enamel, seen as faint vertical cracks. There is no complaint of pain unless the crack deepens and propagates into dentin.

Habits such as biting nails and grinding teeth at night can cause stress in enamel resulting in craze lines.

Management: There are various tests that the dental practitioner can perform to diagnose whether the fracture is limited to enamel or has propagated to dentine.

2. Fractured Cusps: When a portion of the chewing surface of the teeth or a previously filled tooth surface breaks away, it is considered a cusp fracture. Although there can be a complaint of mild sensitivity, the chances of pain are less.

Management: The fractured cusps can be managed with restorations or with root canal treatment followed by crown placement.

3. Cracked teeth: When a vertical fracture line extends from the surface of the tooth towards the tooth. The line of crack here is incomplete and the tooth does not split into two and can be saved. These are often painful and should be managed early as the crack can propagate.

Management: The success of treatment is questionable and is its challenging to predict the outcome of treatment.

4. Split Tooth: Here, the crack extends from the surface of the tooth to the root and splits the tooth into two halves.

Management: In teeth with single roots, mostly extraction is done as it is not possible to save the tooth. In teeth with multiple roots, the teeth can be saved if the remaining roots are intact, the affected portion is removed followed by root canal and crown placement.

5. Vertical Root Fracture(VRF): The crack here initiates from the root and travels up to the tooth surface. VRF usually occurs in a tooth where the root canal was previously done.

Management: Here also, the single-rooted tooth requires extraction while multirooted tooth can be sometimes saved.

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