Chipped a Tooth? What to Do in the First Hour

A chipped tooth arrives without warning — a fall, a hard olive pit, a moment of contact in a sport that was supposed to be non-contact. The first hour afterward tends to be spent trying to work out how worried to be.

Do these things first

1. Rinse gently with warm water to clear any fragments.
2. If there is bleeding, press clean gauze against the area for about ten minutes.
3. Use a cold compress on the outside of the cheek to limit swelling.
4. Keep any piece of the tooth you find. Put it in milk or saliva — not water, and not wrapped in a dry tissue.
5. Call us. Describe what happened and what you can see.

Call immediately if any of these are true

• The tooth was knocked out completely. This is the one true clock — handle it by the crown, not the root, and get to a dentist as fast as you reasonably can.
• You can see pink or red in the middle of the broken surface. That is likely the pulp, and it is exposed.
• The pain is severe rather than sensitive, or it is throbbing on its own without you touching anything.
• The tooth is loose, or it has moved position.
• There is swelling in the face or jaw, or you have a fever.

Why even a painless chip is worth looking at

Enamel does not grow back. A chip leaves a rough edge that can catch and enlarge, and it removes some of the structure that was protecting the softer layers underneath. A small repair now is a genuinely different proposition from a larger one later.

There is also the question of why it happened. A tooth that fractures on something ordinary is sometimes telling you about a crack that was already there, or about clenching and grinding doing quiet damage overnight. That is worth knowing about regardless of the chip.

What repair usually looks like

Small chips are often handled with bonding — tooth-coloured composite shaped directly onto the tooth, usually in a single visit. Larger breaks, or ones affecting a tooth that takes a lot of chewing force, more often call for a crown. If the pulp is involved, root canal treatment may be needed to save the tooth before it is rebuilt.

Which of those applies is not something to determine from a photo or a description. It needs a look and usually an X-ray. What we can tell you on the phone is how urgently you need to come in.