Even with all the advances in dental technology, no filling is completely invulnerable. A filling will occasionally pop out of your tooth, possibly after a sharp impact, possibly while you are chewing on a sticky substance, possibly for no discernable reason. When this happens, it’s important to get to your Federal Way dentistry clinic as soon as you can in order to replace this filling and protect the vulnerable insides of your tooth again.
If you swallow your filling, don’t worry. Modern fillings are non-toxic, and should pass harmlessly from your system. There are some cases of a filling going down the wrong pipe and getting stuck in the lungs, though, which represents a problem for your doctor to take a look at.
One thing to remember when you lose a filling is that you can’t necessarily blame the taffy that yanked it out, or the baseball that knocked it loose. Chances are good that there was a pre-existing problem with your filling; maybe you had some decay or weak tooth structure underneath the filling that allowed it to fall out. With this in mind, you can look at your lost filling as an important opportunity to address what might have been a more serious problem down the line.
