A broken bone heals. A knocked-out tooth does not grow back.
A car crash can do terrible things to your face: throw it into the steering wheel, dash it against the dashboard, or mash it into a deploying airbag. The damage to your jaw and teeth can be significant, even permanent. Fortunately, yes, you can receive compensation for dental injuries from a car accident in Maryland, including the long-term costs many people never think of claiming.
Dental trauma can slip through the cracks of a standard injury claim. Compared with head injuries, compound fractures, and internal bleeding, dental damage either gets undervalued or entirely left out. Here is how those injuries occur, what they actually can cost over a lifetime, and what it takes to get paid for them.
What a Crash Does to Your Teeth
If the head and face are vulnerable in a crash, so are the teeth. Dental injuries from a car accident come in some several common forms:
- Chipped and broken teeth
- Avulsions, or teeth knocked clean from the socket
- Fractured roots and nerve damage
- Damaged restorations, such as fillings, crowns, and bridges
- Broken jaw
- Crushed or shredded soft tissue requiring oral surgery after the car accident
Fractured roots and nerve damage can be easy to miss at first because the damage is below the gum line. It can lead to severe pain, numbness, and a higher risk of infection. A broken jaw can damage the temporomandibular joint, causing pain, skewed alignment, and difficulty eating, talking, opening, or closing the mouth.
None of these injuries are one-and-done fixes. Over time, the costs can really add up.
What Dental Damage Really Costs Over Time
Many post-crash settlements don’t account for long-term costs. Unfortunately, the long term is where dental injuries take big, repetitive bites out of your finances.
Take implants as an example. While the titanium posts can last a lifetime, the visible crowns need replacement every 10 to 15 years, at a cost of $1000 to $2500 per tooth. A single knocked-out tooth at age 30 can mean three or four replacement surgeries over a lifetime. Add crowns, bridges, bone grafts, and the restorative dentistry costs that can pile up here and there, and the total cost towers over the first invoice.
Also, implants can’t fix everything. A misaligned jaw or a visible change to your smile counts as facial disfigurement. Maryland law allows compensation for that. A broken teeth car accident settlement that only covers the initial repairs shortchanges you. Any dental implants settlement value should account for the next thirty years.
Jaw Pain, TMJ, and Whiplash
Did you know that whiplash can cause dental injury?
It can. The same violent whip-wrenching of the neck can throw your jaw out of alignment and cause TMJ—damage to the temporomandibular joint. This condition causes clicking, locking, chronic pain when you chew. It can be easy to overlook as simple soreness in the days after a crash, but don’t. TMJ disorders can require months of treatment, which can range from $100 night guards to surgery.
It’s easier to include TMJ from whiplash in an injury claim if a dentist catches it early.
Proving the Crash Caused Your Dental Injury
Insurers love to argue that your injured tooth was already bad. As if cavities, not a high-speed collision, were the real reason you suffered dental trauma.
A clean record beats that argument. Get emergency dental care right after a car accident, even if you’re not sure your teeth were damaged. If they were injured, that’s all the more reason to get a dentist’s or oral surgeon’s written diagnosis. Take dated photos of the visible injuries. Most importantly, get a treatment plan that projects future care. That will be the document that turns a one-time repair into a full-value claim.
A Maryland dental injury lawyer will make sure those records line up before the insurer can poke holes in them.
Have You Suffered Dental Injuries in a Maryland Motor Vehicle Collision? Let’s Talk.
Your teeth don’t repair themselves after a crash, and you can’t re-do your settlement if you sign too soon for too little. That is why seeking out the advice of an experience attorney is the best approach to ensure you receive the maximum possible compensation for your losses.
GDH Law, based in Lanham, is a full-service personal injury law office handling car accident claims in Prince George’s County and other parts of Maryland. We also serve Washington D.C.
We counsel our clients through every step of a car accident claim or lawsuit. Our goal is to keep you informed, so you always know how your case is progressing. We’re a small firm that gets big results.
If you’re facing dental work after a crash that was caused by another driver, we want to hear from you.
Reach out to our firm to discuss your next moves and see what your claim is really worth.
