My ten-year-old son had a bike accident which led to him breaking a piece off his front tooth. I took him to the pediatric dentist and he said he won’t be able to fix it for another month. I don’t want to wait that long and asked him to recommend someone to us. He seemed offended and said the tooth needed time to desensitize so a month is standard. That rang false to me. Is there a legitimate reason to wait?
Cathy
Dear Cathy,
No, your gut feeling was right, that is not standard operating procedure. There is no reason for you not to deal with this right away. I’m going to suggest you have dental bonding done on your son’s tooth to build back up the missing tooth structure.
Make sure you bring any x-rays your son’s dentist took in order to avoid any unnecessary diagnostic tests. You don’t necessarily have to see a pediatric dentist for this. Instead, you can see a general dentist who treats children. That will open up your options for finding a caregiver quickly for your son.
One word of caution. Dental bonding is a cosmetic procedure. You’ll want to see some before and after pictures of the dentist’s work to ensure he will make your son’s tooth blend and look natural.
Dental Bonding on Adults Versus Children
Children’s teeth are usually very white. They haven’t had years to build up stains and age the appearance of their teeth. Because of that, you can usually just go right ahead with bonding.
Adult teeth have some war stories on them. It is sometimes recommended adults have their teeth whitened before having their bonding done. This is because, while the color of the bonding can be made to blend naturally with any tooth color, it is permanent. If you decide to whiten your teeth later, the natural tooth structure will whiten, but not the bonding, which will then have to be redone to match the new color.
It saves you time and money to do the teeth whitening up ahead if you plan on whitening them any time in the relatively near future.
This blog is brought to you by Libertyville Dentist Dr. David Potts.