Have you observed someone with a dark brown, almost black tooth? It clearly does not contribute to one’s appearance. I bet you were wondering why that only that one tooth had such an odd change in colour.

Mr K was presented to me with a single black front tooth, as shown in the photo above. If you were to study his photo, you would notice a filling done on the edge of this black tooth, and it was rather poorly done as you can clearly make you the borders of the filling. As you are tracing the borders, you would notice the tooth is actually broken diagonally.

Mr K explained this tooth was broken from a fall he had when he was 7 years old, and he never experienced any symptoms at all.

With that said, it makes perfect sense to me this happened. It is common for a fractured tooth, over time, to discolour. This is because the traumatic fall may have injured the nerve and caused it to die. A dying tooth may appear yellow, light brown, grey, or even black. It may look almost as if the tooth is bruised. The discolouration will increase over time as the tooth continues to decay and the nerve dies.

Although I have explained this to Mr K, and also mentioned he has to start root canal treatment to treat its cause, his concern was to only mask the darken tooth colour. I had to stress that the black colour will not be completely masked and he understood. Therefore, a single tooth composite veneer was done.

I have tried my best to mask it, also, to give him back a natural tooth shape.

The above photo is just for comparison. A before and after photo.

Mr K was obviously very pleased as he got what he wanted, to have a natural shaped tooth, masked black tooth, self-confidence skyrocketed and he got to achieve that cost-efficiently.

A happy patient makes a happy dentist. I am glad he likes his veneer. However, I do hope he gets root canal treatment, to properly treat the root cause of the discolouration.