Can teeth crack in ortho?

[benj]

Yes I was 3 quarters of the way through my treatment. You are so right about hard foods and the damage they cause. It really makes no sense from a health point of view, if the food isn't soft enough to be broken up by the strength of human finger tips then it really is not worth eating ... Of course these are all the 'fun' foods we feed our kids! Some clinics even give away these things at the end of treatment. My damage was caused by a piece of Pyrex glass finding its way into my food as a teenager. I'm certainly a much more deliberate eater these days.

[rhibee83]

cool, another thing for me to stress over. One of my top front teeth has had a severe knock (glasses bashing into it, and also my boyfriend and I trying to take a pic of us and the phone being dropped and landing right on my tooth!!) I have a hairline crack in it, and now i am freaking out that the whole tooth will just crack with the movement of the braces. It is already tender to push on and i cannot even bite into an apple with it. I get my brackets on friday so i am going to have another chat to my ortho about that tooth. it really worries me! always has!

Well, if it hasn't fallen apart yet, I doubt it'll just snap in two. However, I can't imagine the pain will get any better either. Your general dentist might have an opinion on the matter too...

well i had really close up x-rays on it and the dentist said there is a hair line crack and i said would i still be a good candidate for braces and he said yes. he said in the future, like 10 years, he said the crack might break and fall off, but he said it won't be for a while yet, he tested the tooth and it is not dead and the nerves still respond well, so who knows! lol. If he said it is fine for braces, and the ortho is happy, i guess it should be ok!

[rhibee83]

i had the unfortunate experience of a back molar "disintegrating" due to the stress of two years of treatment, the molar already had stress fractures due to previous damage and it split in two when I woke up and yawned one morning! I had warning signs of trouble several months before, intense shooting pain in my jaw that I would almost describe as being exquisite... Anyway they saved the root and part of the tooth and crowned it, had no probs since...

Disturbingly, the morning after I was de-braced I was looking at my lovely new smile in the car mirror, in the morning sun when I noticed all my front teeth had deep hairline fractures running vertically and they were concentrated where the brackets had been glued, (I am sure the torquing stress of getting brackets removed had caused a lot of it) they were not really noticeable in normal light. My dentist painted a fluoride solution over my teeth during cleaning, that seem to strengthen the teeth and fill in the cracks quite a bit. Weirdly, those micro cracks are really not visible anymore on my teeth, even in strong sun light one year later.

Did the molar split while you were still in braces? I've got cracks in my teeth, too. I wish I had never crunched ice or popcorn kernels or hard candy or anything. I tell my children this. It takes its toll. I cracked one tooth biting down on a bone fragment in a hamburger at a restaurant. It was an internal crack that bothered me for years and finally had to be crowned. It was the last time I have ever eaten a hamburger that I did not grind the meat myself. I also have the cracks in the enamel that you described.

Yes, the crack in my tooth is in the enamel, and if i look close in the light it looks like I have a vertical crack running down the middle too, I have to look with a torch right at the tooth but I swear it is there lol. I guess everyone has these issues but we all turn out ok in the end , I am going to ask my ortho about it again though as i do not want my tooth to just decide to split in half during treatment! specially the very front top tooth!

[isthistaken]

I hope it will be okay, rhibee, it sounds as if it should be. The tooth that was bothering me the most lately seems to have settled down quite a bit.

[BracedSurgeryStudent]

Yup my lower central inscior on the left is completely hairline fractured

[rhibee83]

funny this topic came up again cos the tooth with the crack in it is hurting, but i think its cos the tooth next to it has a figure 8 lig around it and is being pulled forward to sit in line with the other tooth, and that tooth being pulled sits just a tiny bit behind the tooth with the crack in it so i think they are both feeling the pressure. It feels so sore, but hopefully it will settle down, its hard to brush them but i manage!

[BracedSurgeryStudent]

Mine isn't hurting at all, it hurt a few times in braces when I had them.

[envision5113]

mine did. first day of getting braces on, within 3 hours. I was on the computer and heard a cracking sound. it didn't hurt but i discovered that my upper right canine had broken off but barely hanging on to the gum. it was discovered later on by the oral surgeon (and the orthodontist guessed too) that the tooth was already broken. he assured me that the wire and elastic could not have done this since the elastic was about 3oz of pressure. i eventually got that canine removed and the oral surgeon explained that sometime in my youth it broke (due to other health issues i had growing up) now i get paranoid when the ortho adjusts it, but i keep telling myself that it is some other factor that would cause it to crack, not the ortho procedure itself.

[JeniK]

I have two crowns. They are in the back. I do not have braces yet. In Aug I will get them. I am worried about my crowns breaking.

[isthistaken]

I

I have two crowns. They are in the back. I do not have braces yet. In Aug I will get them. I am worried about my crowns breaking.

I have at least 6 crowns--no problems with the crowns yet after almost 4 months. I did break an old metal filling and it had to be repaired while in braces. They took the wire out, fixed the filling and put the wire back on, three appointments in one day. But my crowns are okay thus far.

[isthistaken]

mine did. first day of getting braces on, within 3 hours. I was on the computer and heard a cracking sound. it didn't hurt but i discovered that my upper right canine had broken off but barely hanging on to the gum. it was discovered later on by the oral surgeon (and the orthodontist guessed too) that the tooth was already broken. he assured me that the wire and elastic could not have done this since the elastic was about 3oz of pressure. i eventually got that canine removed and the oral surgeon explained that sometime in my youth it broke (due to other health issues i had growing up) now i get paranoid when the ortho adjusts it, but i keep telling myself that it is some other factor that would cause it to crack, not the ortho procedure itself.

Wow. It must have already been weakened but I think I would also be a bit paranoid after that.

[anitahansen]

I'm a dental assistant, and we do see quite a few cracked teeth in people that are undergoing, or just have had orthodontic treatment. However, I don't think the braces has to much to do with it.

The common factor is that almost all the patients has had white fillings placed on the chewing surface of molars and/or premolars. They take way less stress and chewing forces. I'm not an expert on orthodontic treamtent, but obviously it changes the way people bite down and chew, creating even more stress on the white fillings, that are fragile even to begin with.

So to anyone who wish to keep their teeth in one piece, I strongly recommend getting silver (amalgam) fillings instead.

[Winkos]

I'm a dental assistant, and we do see quite a few cracked teeth in people that are undergoing, or just have had orthodontic treatment. However, I don't think the braces has to much to do with it.

The common factor is that almost all the patients has had white fillings placed on the chewing surface of molars and/or premolars. They take way less stress and chewing forces. I'm not an expert on orthodontic treamtent, but obviously it changes the way people bite down and chew, creating even more stress on the white fillings, that are fragile even to begin with.

So to anyone who wish to keep their teeth in one piece, I strongly recommend getting silver (amalgam) fillings instead.

In my area you would be very hard pressed to find a dentist who will put in amalgam fillings. My dentist doesn't and my friend is on the quest to find one who does because her insurance only covers part of the cost of composite fillings. Also- my dentist told me that composite fillings were better for the teeth, because they need less drilling, and they do not expand and contract with heat and cold like amalgam fillings do. It gets confusing with so many different opinions......

[anitahansen]

The reason dentists want to place white fillings, is that they make so much more money on patients that has them.

Yes, an amalgam (silver fillings) will expand when it gets hotter, but so will your tooth. What they neglected to tell you is that a white fillings will shrink. Not only when it is cold, but all the time, until it doesn't seal your tooth anymore. At that point bacteria will enter your tooth, and I guess you can imagine the rest.

Yes, you need to drill away a little more tooth when doing an amalgam filling, but it will last a lot longer. White fillings needs to be replaced quite often, and ever time you do that, you need to drill away more of your tooth. Long term, you loose a lot more tooth structure with white fillings.

Studies also show that teeth with white fillings are more likely to need root canals and crowns. An important motive for a dentist to do white fillings, since these are not cheap.

Some dentists can be trusted, others not. I would stay away from one that only does white fillings, and doesn't give the patient the choice.