Broken Denture? Now What
It never fails, that when something goes wrong it is always at the worst possible time. Have a broken denture and wondering what you can do to get you through your wedding, graduation, party, or work day? Here are a few tips.
First off, determined what happened. Typically with dentures there are only a few ways in which they break.
- Did a tooth come off or break?
- Did the denture break in half?
- Did a piece of the "pink" acrylic fall off or break off, leaving the denture mostly intact?
- Do you have a partial and did a metal clasp break?
Broken Denture Tooth
If it is only a tooth that fell out of your denture, then that is good news. This type of repair is generally easy to temporarily fix your self. As always, a professional repair with denture acrylic is the best long term repair. However, when In a bind you have a few options.
1. Superglue- yes you can superglue the tooth temporarily back on.
- Take your denture out, dry it off, make sure the tooth goes right back in place.
- Apply a small amount of superglue, then quickly add the tooth.
- Give it time to dry, remove any excess material.
- There will be a chemical taste, and superglue is somewhat toxic. Expect this self repair to only last a short while, try not to eat on the tooth. Come see us to get he tooth professionally added back on, so it will last longer.
2. Denture Repair Kit - available from Walgreens, CVS.
- You can use this kit as an alternative to super glue. Follow the instructions above and use in place of super glue. This repair kit shows that it also works for cracks in the denture, however I do not recommend this at all for cracks in the denture.
Cracked Denture
DO NOT TRY THIS YOUR SELF!!!
Cracked Dentures or Dentures broken in half are unrepairable for a DIY (Do it Your Self). If you attempt to use superglue or the denture repair kit you will inevitably be buying your self a new denture.
You see, a cracked denture is only repairable if it goes back together exactly how it was before. This is a special kind of repair that can only be done in out dental office. If you attempt to repair and you get it wrong, the glue or repair material will fill in the crack and we will be unable to get it back exactly how it was. This will result in your bite being off, lack of suction, high areas on your gums, ect.