Is it possible to have sustained dental trauma without knowing it?

Doctor's Answer

Yes, you could have dental trauma without even knowing it. A very common minor traumatic injury to the tooth that I often see happens when you are eating. For example, if you’re eating and you are biting down on something really hard. For example, using your teeth to bite on chilli crab shells, or if you use your teeth to open beer bottles. People use their teeth to do a lot of silly things. So when you do that, sometimes you injure the tooth by using too much force on it and then you can have a chipped tooth or you can have a small crack on the tooth.

Depending on how big that crack is or how big that chip is, you may or may not feel any pain. So if it is a minor chip or minor crack, you may not initially feel any pain whatsoever.

But when you go to a dentist, if the dentist is careful, the dentist will be able to pick out all these small cracks, the dentist could then inform you that your tooth has actually cracked. And you may want to protect it before it starts to get painful.

There are a lot of things you can do in terms of preventive measures to reinforce the damaged tooth before it gets painful even if it is not painful in the beginning.

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