How Do You Handle a Dental Emergency?
Any dental emergency is a frightening experience, and in most cases, it’s important to get dental attention immediately. In most cases, however, one can do things to reduce the immediate discomfort and minimize the risk of complications.
We have listed some dental emergencies and steps you can take to handle them before seeing a dentist.
How Do You Handle a Dental Emergency?
This’s how you handle these dental emergencies:
- Dental Trauma
This refers to an injury to your teeth and surrounding area, including the tongue, soft tissues of the lips, and inner cheeks. This kind of injury it’s a common dental emergency that often results in tooth damage or loss.
Whether an injury is caused by a sports or vehicle accident, a fall, or any other blow to your head or mouth, it happens without warning and at the most inconvenient times. Until you get to an emergency dentist, here’s what you need to do to improve the outcome of your situation:
Fractured Cracked or Chipped Tooth
You will likely feel it if you’re tooth fractures or cracks resulting from an injury or from biting into a hard food item. This will happen by the tooth shooting pain when chewing to a sudden or intense ache caused by cold or hot temperatures. If your pain comes and goes, you will likely suffer tooth damage from exposure to the pulp.
You should try taking over-the-counter pain medication and gently biting down on a moist cloth or gauze. This helps relieve the symptoms until you can get it seen by your dentist. The sooner you get your treatment, the better your outcome. Fracture or cracked teeth are often repaired with a crown or filling and function perfectly for many years afterward.
Dislodged or Knocked Out Teeth
Proper emergency action can save your teeth if you get knocked out. For example, if the trauma to your mouth results in a tooth falling out of the mouth, you can save that tooth by doing the following:
- Rescue your tooth immediately, pick it up by the crown, and avoid touching the roots with your fingers.
- Rinse the knocked-out tooth carefully with clean and fresh water to remove any bacteria and dirt it may have picked from the ground. Avoid using soap or any other chemicals that can kill the roots.
- Ensure you put the tool in its socket if you can by holding it by the crown and inserting the root carefully into the socket. Hold the tooth gently in place and bite down slowly until it’s back in its correct position. The sooner you put it in its correct position, the more likely you will save the root.
- If you cannot pick the tooth in its sockets until you get to your dentist and show you put it in your mouth next to your cheek or carried in a container with milk to keep it moist. Avoid using water because the tooth root cells can’t handle the water for more than a few seconds at a time.
Try to get to your dentist at DSV Dental Brooklin Village within 30 minutes of your injury. This helps maximize your chances of saving the tooth.
- Loss of Crown, Filling, or Appliance
If a feeling or a crown falls out or you break a denture or other appliance, it might not look like a big problem at first. However, you should get dental attention as soon as possible because any of these problems can cause changes in your bite. This affects your overall dental health in the long term.
In addition, all the appliances can result in your mouth being inadequately supported, which causes your other teeth to loosen and shift.
A missing dental filling also exposes the roots to bacteria resulting in an abscess or an infection. If possible, you should rescue your broken appliance or crown and bring it with you to your emergency dentistry in Whitby, ON. Your dentist will decide whether to refit any part of your broken appliance or crown or use it to model a new appliance.
- Tooth Abscess
An Abscess develops, and one gets bacteria into a tooth’s pulp through a crack or chip in the enamel or a dental cavity. The bacteria causes an infection and inflammation, which results in a swollen gum area and pain when one is chewing. You should try taking over-the-counter pain medicine before getting to your emergency dentist.