How To Restore A Chipped Tooth

A chipped front tooth can look unsightly and detract from your smile. If you can't get to a dentist to get it fixed, you'll need to restore the tooth yourself to gain back your natural appearance. Here is how you can temporarily restore a chipped tooth to regain your normal appearance.

You Will Need:

  • Dental Composite Light-Cure Resin
  • Blue LED Laser Light
  • Floss Picks
  • Mirror
  • Antiseptic Mouthwash
  • Hair Dryer
  • Cotton Balls

Clean and Dry Tooth

The first thing you should do is clean your tooth. Brush the tooth to remove any food particles or debris from the surface. Then rinse your mouth thoroughly with an antiseptic mouthwash to kill any germs in your mouth that could get trapped under the resin. Trapped germs could lead to tooth decay.

The next thing is to dry the tooth. Stick some cotton balls between the gums and the side of your mouth. The cotton will absorb any saliva that you might expel during the process. Take a hair dryer and blow warm air on the tooth until it is completely dry. The dryness will help the resin bond to the tooth better than if the tooth was wet.

Apply Resin

You need to apply one thin coat of dental composite light-cure resin at a time until you build the tooth back up. Squeeze a little bit of the resin onto your finger and spread it over the chipped surface of the tooth. You can use the curved pick end of a plastic floss pick to move the resin onto areas of the tooth that you can't reach with your finger. You need to bite down immediately after you apply the resin. Biting down makes sure you haven't put on too much resin on top of the tooth that could interfere with your ability to chew food. You will harden the resin after you bite down.

Hardening the Resin

Dental composite light-cure resin is hardened by using a laser fitted with a blue LED light. The blue LED light has the same frequency as the lights dentist use to cure the resin in a patient's mouth in the dentist's office. Shine the light on one spot on the resin for about a minute to cure the material. Then move to another place on the resin and cure that spot. Keep on repeating this until all the resin on the surface of your tooth has been cured.

Repeat Process

You can apply a second layer of resin after you have cured the first layer. You will repeat this process until the tooth has been built back up to its normal size and you can't notice the chipped part anymore.

The repair job should hold long enough for you to get to a dentist so they can do a permanent repair job on your tooth. For more information, contact Hernandez Dental or a similar location.


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