This is a patient that we have seen recently. He thought that he had broken a filling, but, in reality what we found was that his tooth was broken below the gum line.
*Note the dark line at the back part of tooth.
This entire cusp is separated from the rest of the tooth. One of the problems with silver or mercury fillings (besides the obvious health risks) is that they create a wedge effect as they start to age. If we had replaced the silver filling with a white or composite filling 2 months ago…an expensive crown would have been prevented!
