Chipped or broken a tooth: the first hour

Teeth break on olive stones, hockey pucks, and stairs. What you do in the first hour rarely decides whether the tooth survives — unlike a knocked-out tooth, where minutes matter — but it does affect how simple the repair is.

What should I do straight away?

• Keep any pieces. Put them in a little milk, or your own saliva. A clean fragment can sometimes be bonded back on, and it will always beat a colour match made from scratch.
• Rinse gently with warm water to clear grit. Do not scrub the fragment.
• Cold compress outside the cheek if there is swelling or you were hit.
• Cover a sharp edge. Sugar-free chewing gum or dental wax from a pharmacy stops it shredding your tongue overnight.
• Do not use household glue. Not on a tooth, not on a fragment. It is not safe in the mouth and it makes the proper repair harder.

How do I know how bad it is?

The rough guide is what the tooth does when air or cold water reaches it. A chip in the enamel usually feels of nothing. When cold air makes it wince, the break has reached the softer layer beneath. When there is a pink or red spot in the middle of the broken surface, or bleeding from the tooth itself rather than the gum, the nerve is exposed — and that is same-day treatment.

What can wait, and what cannot?

Book soon, but it is not tonight: a small chip with no pain, a rough edge, a lost filling with no pain.

Call us the same day: pain to air or cold, a visible pink spot, bleeding from the tooth, a large piece gone, or a tooth that now feels loose or sits differently when you bite.

Emergency department first: a blow hard enough to cause a knock to the head, a jaw that will not close properly, or bleeding you cannot stop.

What about a child’s tooth?

Baby teeth are handled differently from adult teeth, and a knock to one can affect the permanent tooth developing above it. Call us either way so we can check the tooth and the gum around it, even when the chip itself looks trivial.

What we will do

We look at how deep the break goes and whether the nerve is involved, then set out the options in plain language with the cost in writing before anything starts. Small chips are often smoothed or bonded in one visit. Deeper breaks may need a crown, and a tooth with an exposed nerve may need root canal treatment to keep it.

If the tooth came out altogether rather than breaking, that one is time-critical — read what to do in the first 30 minutes instead. Otherwise, our emergency and urgent care page covers what happens when you call.