When a Front Tooth Is Broken Very Severely by Falling or Bumping Into Something: A Real Front Tooth Bridge Case from City Hall Station Dental Clinic

Isn’t it so cold these days? It feels like winter suddenly arrived.

Every winter, there is a sharp increase in patients who break a tooth because they slipped and fell... Patients who had a lot to drink at year-end gatherings and then bumped into something and broke a front tooth...

Today, at Yonsei Yegam Dental Clinic near City Hall Station in Seoul, we would like to introduce a front tooth bridge case for a patient whose front tooth was broken. In other words, this is a trauma patient case.

[This case was posted with the patient’s consent to disclose photos. We only post cases with disclosure consent.]

Yonsei Yegam Dental Clinic near City Hall Station in Seoul

It is a 3-minute walk straight from Exit 7 of City Hall Station (233 meters),

and is located directly across from the Samsung Main Building.

This patient had a tooth severely broken after hitting a pillar.

You can tell just by looking that the front tooth is badly broken, right?

More than half of the front tooth is fractured, and the part that is still attached is loose and dangling.

It looks painful just to see it.

The dental nerve was exposed, the tooth was fractured into pieces, and it was quite a mess.

When a tooth breaks from a fall, the most common treatment is to place a crown on that tooth alone, but even for a crown, there needs to be a certain amount of tooth structure left to reduce it and cover it. Because too much of the tooth had been fractured, extraction was decided. After extraction, the question becomes: implant or bridge?

In the case of an implant, after implant surgery, you must wait several months until the implant integrates with the bone, and only then is the implant crown completed, so it takes a long time. For front teeth, the bone is usually thin, so the prognosis may be less stable than for molars.

A bridge is made by reducing the teeth on both sides and connecting to them. A bridge has the disadvantage of requiring the adjacent teeth to be reduced, but if the teeth on both sides already have decay or already have crowns, or if the patient wants the final result faster than an implant can provide, a bridge can be a good option.

With an implant, after surgery, the upper front tooth area usually needs about 4 months of waiting before the implant crown is completed. In contrast, for a bridge, after extraction you wait at least about a month for the gums to heal (of course, waiting longer is better), then the bridge work begins. After the adjacent teeth are reduced, the bridge can usually be completed in about a week, so the overall treatment period is much shorter. That is why people who suddenly lose a front tooth in an accident often choose a bridge because the shorter treatment time is naturally preferable.

(While the gums heal after extraction, the space cannot be left empty, so a temporary tooth will be worn.)

First, the front tooth bridge Let me show you the before-and-after photos first!

These are before-and-after photos of the broken tooth bridge.

Dental bridge procedure

The bridge procedure is as shown in the diagram below.

1. -> 2.

3 -> 4

The adjacent teeth are reduced, the bridge is made at the dental lab, and then the bridge is bonded at the clinic.

Before-and-after photos of a broken front tooth bridge

Before-and-after photos of a broken front tooth bridge

Before-and-after photos of a broken front tooth bridge

Before-and-after photos of a broken front tooth bridge

The patient originally had a deep bite with the front teeth set inward, so while making the bridge, the recessed front teeth were designed to look normal and slightly more forward than before, and the four most visible front teeth were made in a slightly brighter shade, creating an overall brighter appearance for the teeth.

I’ll also show you a patient photo from a lower front tooth bridge.

In this case, the patient was a foreigner. Their lower tooth had been extracted a long time ago at another clinic, and because they wanted to receive treatment quickly in Korea and leave, we proceeded with a bridge rather than an implant.

Every winter, many patients come in because they slipped, broke a tooth, or lost a tooth.

Not every broken tooth should be treated the same way. Depending on the extent of the fracture and the symptoms, treatment options such as resin, crown, bridge, and implant may differ from case to case, so you should be diagnosed and counseled by the dentist who will actually perform the treatment.

Please be careful in winter about slipping, accidents, and so on. Other cases are also available at the link below, so please refer to them!

https://blog.naver.com/yonseiyegam/222619692686

My tooth fell out. The case of a patient with a missing tooth prosthetic ca.. : Naver Blog

[Seoul Station/Chungjeongno/Dental Clinic] Broken front tooth - broken front t.. : Naver Blog

Yonsei Yegam Dental Clinic at City Hall Station, visited by people from overseas for beautiful, properly aligned, and healthy teeth

Seoul Metropolitan Government-certified medical tourism partner institution