What to do right now — the short version
Keep the temporary crown (Provisorium), even if it looks broken; do not throw it away and do not swallow it. Rinse your mouth with lukewarm water, rinse the crown itself, and put it somewhere safe in a small container. Do not use superglue, household adhesive or any repair kit not sold for dental use — that is the one mistake that turns a minor problem into an expensive one. Ring the practice the same day if you can: this is not usually an emergency in the sense of danger, but it is a job for days rather than weeks, because a prepared tooth left uncovered becomes sensitive and its neighbours begin to drift. If you cannot be seen quickly, a pharmacy (Apotheke) sells a temporary dental cement for exactly this situation, and it will bridge a weekend.
The first ten minutes, step by step
1. Stop and find it. Most temporaries come off while eating, so check what is in your mouth before you spit or swallow. Swallowed is not dangerous — it will pass — but you have lost the piece. 2. Rinse your mouth with lukewarm water. Not hot, not ice-cold: the exposed tooth is sensitive to both. 3. Rinse the crown under running water and dry it. Do not scrub the inside with a brush; you may remove nothing but you may also distort a thin edge. 4. Look inside it. If you can see a lump of old cement, or, worse, a piece of tooth-coloured material that is clearly part of the tooth rather than the crown, note that and mention it on the phone. 5. Store it properly. A small box, a clean container, a pill box. Not wrapped in a paper napkin, which is how most temporaries reach the bin. 6. Check the tooth. A prepared tooth (the stump under the crown) looks smaller and darker than a normal tooth. That is what it should look like. Sharp edges, obvious cracks or bleeding are worth reporting. 7. Phone the practice and say clearly: my temporary came off, when it happened, whether it is intact, whether it hurts, and which tooth. That sentence gets you triaged correctly. 8. Until you are seen: chew on the other side, keep the area clean with a soft brush, and avoid very hot, very cold and very sweet things.
What not to do — the list that matters most
Never use superglue. Cyanoacrylate and similar household adhesives are not intended for the mouth, they are irritant to the gum and the pulp, and they set hard and irregularly. A temporary glued this way cannot be removed cleanly. The result is a longer appointment, sometimes damage to a tooth that was already fragile, and occasionally a crown that has to be destroyed to get it off. It is the single most common way a five-minute problem becomes an hour of drilling.
Do not force it back on. If the crown will not seat with light finger pressure, something is in the way — old cement, swollen gum, a piece of food, or a fragment of the crown that is missing. Forcing it can crack the crown, or push it on at an angle so that it hits first when you bite and starts to hurt.
Do not leave it out and simply carry on. A prepared tooth without a cover is not stable. Within days the neighbouring teeth and the opposing tooth begin to move into the space, and if they move far enough the definitive crown that has already been made will not fit. Then it has to be remade, and that is a real cost and a real delay.
Do not sleep with it loosely in place. A temporary that will not stay put can be inhaled or swallowed during the night. If it does not sit securely, take it out and keep it in its box until you are seen.
Do not use a home whitening tray, a bite guard or an old night guard to hold it. They apply pressure in the wrong direction.
Do not panic about the appearance. The stump under a front tooth temporary looks dramatic and nothing like a tooth. That is normal preparation, not damage.
Can you put it back yourself?
Sometimes, and it is a legitimate stopgap rather than a repair.
Pharmacies in Germany stock a temporary dental cement (ask for provisorischer Zahnzement or Zahnzement zum vorübergehenden Befestigen). It is intended precisely for this: holding a crown or temporary in place until you can be seen. It is not a treatment and it does not replace the appointment.
Do not attempt it if the crown is broken, if it does not fit without force, if the tooth is painful, if the crown covers more than one tooth as part of a bridge, or if you cannot get the piece to sit the same way twice. In those cases keep it in its box and go in.
Why it came off — and why the reason matters
The reason is not idle curiosity. It determines whether re-cementing the same temporary is enough or whether something has to change.
Sticky food. Toffee, chewing gum, caramel, dried fruit. The commonest cause by a distance, and the easiest to fix: same crown, fresh cement, different snacks.
Floss pulled upwards through the contact. The second commonest. Floss should be released at one end and drawn out sideways while a temporary is in place. If this is what happened, the technique is the fix.
The cement simply washed out. Temporary cement is water-soluble by design. Over weeks, saliva gets to it. Perfectly normal, particularly towards the end of a longer waiting period.
The shape of the prepared tooth. A short or heavily tapered stump gives the crown little to hold on to. Here the temporary usually needs modifying rather than re-sticking, and it will keep coming off until it is.
The bite. If the temporary is a fraction too high, every chew levers it. It needs adjusting, which takes minutes.
Grinding or clenching (Bruxismus). Night-time forces are far greater than chewing forces. If you grind, a sturdier temporary — and a conversation about a night guard (Knirscherschiene) — is the answer.
Decay or a fracture underneath. Less common, more important. If the tooth under the temporary has broken down or a new cavity has formed, nothing will hold until that is dealt with. This is the case that makes it worth being seen rather than living with the pharmacy cement.
How urgent is it, honestly?
| Situation | How quickly to act |
|---|---|
| No pain, back tooth, intact temporary, you can be seen this week | Ring today, appointment within a few days |
| Front tooth, visible gap | Ring today and say it is a front tooth — practices usually find a slot |
| Sharp edge cutting the tongue or cheek | Same day |
| Marked sensitivity to cold or air, or a throbbing ache | Same day |
| Swelling of the gum, cheek or face, or fever | Urgent — same day, and out of hours the out-of-hours service |
| Temporary swallowed or inhaled with coughing and breathlessness | Breathing difficulty is a medical emergency, not a dental one |
| Bridge temporary spanning several teeth has come off | Same day — a bridge temporary holds more than one prepared tooth |
The middle ground is where most people sit: no pain, nothing dramatic, but a job that should not wait a fortnight.
Getting seen at short notice in Germany
If you are new to the country, the mechanics are worth knowing before you need them.
During opening hours, ring the practice rather than emailing, and use the word Schmerzen (pain) if you have any, or say clearly that a temporary has come out. German practices reserve capacity for acute cases every day, and a short factual description gets you into it. Our own hours run Monday to Friday from 07:30 to 19:30 and on Saturday from 08:00 to 18:00, which covers most of the moments when a temporary decides to come off.
Outside opening hours, there is an organised dental out-of-hours service (zahnärztlicher Notdienst), arranged regionally by the dental association for each area. The practice’s answering machine normally names the current on-call service, and the regional rota can be found online for Wuppertal, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Bonn and the rest of NRW. A lost temporary without pain is not usually a reason to use it; pain, swelling or a bleeding wound is.
If you are abroad, any dentist can re-cement a temporary. Keep the piece, get it put back, and have it checked when you return — the definitive crown is being made to a specific stump shape, and your own practice needs to know what happened.
If your German is limited, the phone call is the hard part, not the treatment. It helps enormously to already have a practice where the conversation happens in English — for people living in Düsseldorf, Cologne or Bonn, 20 to 30 minutes of travel is a normal trade for that, and patients come to us from across NRW on exactly that basis: English-Speaking Dentist in NRW. It is also worth reading Emergency dentist and out-of-hours care in Germany before you need it rather than during.
What happens at the appointment
Usually less than you expect. The tooth is cleaned, old cement is removed from the stump and from inside the temporary, the fit and the bite are checked, and the crown is re-cemented. In most cases no anaesthetic is needed and the appointment is short.
Where more is required, it is generally one of these: the temporary is adjusted or rebuilt because it never had enough grip; a new one is made because the old one is broken; or the tooth underneath needs attention first. If a prepared tooth has become genuinely painful, root canal treatment (Wurzelbehandlung) is occasionally the right answer before the definitive crown goes on — inconvenient at that moment, far better than discovering it after an expensive crown has been cemented.
Bring the old temporary even if it is in pieces. It tells the dentist how it broke, which is diagnostic information you cannot get any other way.
What is normal — and when to get in touch quickly
No. Household adhesives are not made for use in the mouth, they irritate the gum and the tooth’s nerve, and they set in a way that makes clean removal impossible. Use a temporary dental cement from a pharmacy if you genuinely cannot be seen quickly, and otherwise keep the crown in a box and ring the practice.
Usually not in the sense of danger, but it is time-sensitive. Without the cover, the prepared tooth becomes sensitive and the surrounding teeth start to drift within days, which can stop the finished crown from fitting. Pain, swelling or a sharp edge moves it into the same-day category.
It will almost always pass without any problem, and there is nothing to do beyond telling the practice so a replacement can be made. Coughing, wheezing or breathlessness at the moment it disappeared is a different matter and needs medical attention immediately, because it suggests it went towards the airway rather than the stomach.
As short a time as you can arrange. A day or two is usually uneventful; a couple of weeks frequently is not, because teeth move, the gum grows over the margin and the prepared surface is unprotected. If the wait is unavoidable, a pharmacy cement is better than nothing.
That depends on why it came off and on how the treatment is being billed, and it is a fair question to ask when you ring. What does a temporary crown cost? sets out how temporaries are handled in a German treatment and cost plan.
Not necessarily wrong, but something needs changing. Repeated loss usually points to a short or tapered prepared tooth, a bite that is catching, heavy grinding, or decay under the crown. Re-cementing the same temporary a third time without addressing the cause is not a plan.
A temporary that comes off is a common, unalarming event with one genuinely bad response: reaching for the superglue. Everything else is manageable. Keep the piece, rinse it, store it, ring the practice, and use a pharmacy cement only as a bridge over a weekend.
The reason to act within days rather than weeks has nothing to do with pain and everything to do with movement. Teeth shift into any space you leave them, and a definitive crown made for a stump that has since drifted is a crown that has to be made again.
Zahnarztpraxis Tsypin · Wuppertal. This article was medically reviewed and is provided for information; it does not replace an examination. Updated August 2026.
