Why did my child's tooth turn gray after a fall?

What is actually happening inside the tooth

A tooth is not solid all the way through. Underneath the hard outer enamel sits living tissue, including the nerve and the small blood vessels that keep the tooth nourished. A hard enough bump can bruise that inner tissue even when the outside of the tooth is not chipped or cracked at all, the same way an injury can affect what is underneath the surface without leaving an obvious mark right away.

The color a tooth shows on the outside is partly a reflection of what is happening inside it. So a change in color is often the first visible clue that the inside of the tooth was affected, and it can take days, weeks, or occasionally longer to show up after the fall itself, long after everyone else has stopped thinking about it.

Baby tooth or permanent tooth, right away or months later

Both baby teeth and permanent teeth can darken after an injury, and what it means is not identical from child to child or tooth to tooth. Sometimes a tooth settles into a slightly different shade and stays healthy and functional for years. Sometimes the color keeps changing, or other signs join it, and that points toward the tooth needing actual treatment. The only way to know which situation you are looking at is to have your pediatric dentist examine the tooth, sometimes with a digital X-ray, rather than guessing from the color alone.

Timing varies quite a bit too. Some teeth darken within days. Others take weeks or months, which is exactly why a color change months after a fall nobody remembers as serious can still be connected to that fall.

Call us so we can look

A gray tooth with nothing else going on, no pain, no swelling, no bad taste, is not a middle of the night emergency. It is, however, a call this week rather than a watch and see indefinitely situation, since only an actual exam can tell you what is going on inside that tooth. Call (239) 482-2722, mention the fall and roughly when it happened, even if it was a while ago, and we will take it from there.

Treat it with more urgency if the color change comes with pain, a swollen gum near that tooth, a bump that looks like a pimple on the gum, or a bad taste that will not go away. And if there is facial swelling together with a fever, or any trouble breathing or swallowing, that is not a call to us at all. Go to the emergency room, and our dental emergencies page walks through that kind of triage in more detail.

What to have ready when you call

The front desk can help fastest with a few details in hand: roughly when the fall happened, what your child hit or fell against, whether it is a baby tooth or a permanent one if you know, and whether the color change is the only thing you have noticed or whether pain or swelling has shown up too.

You do not need to have this figured out before calling, and there is no such thing as a question that is too small to ask. If your pediatric dentist decides the tooth needs treatment, options range from watching it at future checkups to a nerve treatment or, occasionally, a crown, and that decision is always explained to you before anything begins. More everyday questions like this one are gathered on our quick answers page.