Can You Save A Knocked-Out Tooth?
Posted on: 2 August 2017
When you see your tooth lying on the ground, you might think that all is lost. After all, you can sew a digit back on, but you can't sew a tooth back in place. On the other hand, modern dentistry has several answers that can help save teeth. The important thing is to make sure you take the appropriate steps after you lose your tooth to make sure that you at least have a chance of saving your tooth.
Placing Your Tooth Back in the Socket
Your first move should be to try to place your tooth back in the socket. The longer your tooth is exposed to the air, the more likely it is for the root to be damaged. Thus, you should look for the tooth immediately, rinse it off, then place it back in the socket. If you can slide your tooth back into place, roll up a strip of gauze, place it over the damaged tooth, and bite down to apply pressure. This will help to suppress bleeding and to keep the tooth in place. Once you have taken these steps, rush to a dentist who provides emergency services.
A Tooth that Won't Go into the Socket
In some cases, you may have too much pain or may otherwise be unable to put your tooth back in the socket. In such cases, all is not lost. Instead, you should put the tooth in some sort of container and then fill the container with either your own saliva or milk. Saliva is the first choice, but if spitting into a cup is not something you feel comfortable doing, then covering the tooth in milk will work just fine. Once you have properly taken care of the tooth, you must rush to an emergency dentist so the dentist can take steps to protect your tooth.
As you should infer from the description above, taking care of a knocked-out tooth is a time sensitive matter. Thus, you don't want to be scrambling around trying to find an emergency dentist while you are biting down on a piece of gauze to keep your tooth from falling out again. Instead, you should talk to your dentist to see if they will accept emergency appointments or, at the very least, recommend a dentist who will. Then you can just program the number of your emergency dentist, such as at TLC Dental Center, into your phone so that it is there if you ever (and hopefully you don't) need it.
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