No matter how much care you take of your teeth, there are some things you cannot take care of yourself. This includes when you suffer an accident or injury that causes major damage to your teeth. Should you suffer from a broken tooth, you need to act quickly and know what to do to give your tooth the best chance of being saved.
The first thing to do is to seek emergency dental treatment from your own dentist, or an emergency out of hours dentist should your own dentist be unavailable. Your dentist can splint the tooth to try and save it, or suggest another form of dental repair should the damage be too great to be able to save your tooth.
Immediately after your accident or injury
If your tooth has been completely knocked out of your mouth, then try to find it and see if you can place it back into your mouth. If the tooth has fallen somewhere dirty, you can give it a quick rinse under a cold tap, or wipe it clean with a tissue and some water or your own saliva before putting it back in to your mouth.
Place a clean piece of tissue paper over the tooth and gently close your jaws together to help hold your tooth in place. Seek emergency help immediately from your dentist or nearest out of hours dental surgery.
If your mouth has been so injured that you can’t put the tooth back in, place your tooth in a small container of milk and seek emergency care immediately.
Broken tooth treatment
If you have broken your tooth rather than had it knocked completely out, then collect the broken tooth pieces and take them with you to your dentist. In some cases your dentist will be able to mend your broken tooth by sticking your broken pieces back together. This is why it is worth taking any fragmented pieces with you to your dentist as it could save you from having a crown fitted.
Teeth knocked out of line
Sometimes you can experience an injury to your mouth that doesn’t result in any tooth loss or breakages, but instead can impact your teeth to be banged out of place. Of course, you should seek out emergency dental treatment right away in this case too. Your dentist can work to reposition your teeth back into their original place and apply stitches and tooth splints if necessary.
Time is of the essence
Whether it is an adult or a child that needs emergency dental treatment to re-implant missing teeth, realign or repair broken teeth, time really is of the essence for treatment to be a success. The sooner a missing or broken tooth is returned to it’s home, the more likely the chances of it surviving.
You will not know for sure whether your emergency treatment has been successful until a few weeks later. It will become evident if more treatment is needed or you need to have a complete replacement, such as a dental implant to completely replace a damaged tooth.
