Dealing with a dental emergency can be baffling, especially for someone who isn't a trained medical or dental professional. It can be hard to think straight when an emergency is already happening in front of you. Whether it's a severe toothache or perhaps a chipped tooth, it is essential to have the presence of mind to do the proper steps to ensure that you can minimize the damage or the discomfort.
To give you a better idea of how to handle specific dental emergency cases, we've come up with some dental emergency tips that can help lessen your anxiety when faced with a dental emergency.
When You Should Go To The Hospital
But before we even go further, dental problems require professional help. If you want to be preemptive in your dental approach, visit your dentist at least twice every year for prevention. That will make sure that your pearly whites are in perfect condition. Aside from visiting your dentist regularly, be sure that you are practicing good oral hygiene. A lot of dental emergencies would've been avoided if individuals flossed and brushed their teeth daily.
But when should you take a trip to the hospital or the dental clinic? As a rule of thumb, apart from your regular checkup, emergencies will require that you visit a dentist as soon as possible. Some emergencies might even cause uncomfortable levels of pain that can disrupt your activities.
Be Prepared!
Preparation is critical if you want to lessen the damage or the amount of time you are in pain dealing with dental emergencies. What you want is to be a person who is prepared for dental emergencies.
The first thing that you should know is how to do first aid. First aid can help lessen the pain or lessen the damage to your teeth. The problem with first aid is that you get better with it as you do it more often. On the other hand, it’s something that you can learn online. You can watch videos to know how you can perform first aid. Here are specific emergencies and first-aid approaches that you can do when facing these situations.
Specific Emergencies
Knocked-Out Tooth
There are a lot of instances why you could get your tooth knocked out. The good news though is that it has a high probability of being placed back by your dentist if you act quickly and if you do the next steps correctly. In some instances, you can reattach your tooth on your own.
The bad news is that you only have 1-hour window period before you say goodbye to your tooth forever. Once the tooth has been knocked out, be sure only to grab it by the crown and not by the root. You also want to dip it in water with salt or on milk if you have plans of having it reattached by your dentist. An ideal solution to use is a product that contains a cell growth medium such as Save-a-Tooth. It is very important to make sure that you get in touch with an emergency dentist in a timely manner to make sure that your dental health is taken care of. So if you’re in the San Diego area, make sure you reach out to http://emergencydentistsandiego.net
Lost Restoration or Filling
Another typical emergency is losing your tooth filling. Without the filling, food can get stuck in the open spaces of your tooth; this can lead to bacteria buildup while your dentin is exposed.
The most obvious step is that you will have to visit your dentist to have the tooth/teeth restored. But unlike a knocked-out tooth, you don't have to place the filling in milk or water with salt. Instead, you will just have to clean the lost filling and keep it in a ziplock. The dentist will then decide whether or not to use it again.
You must clean the tooth and ensure that it is free of any food particles. Since it's an exposed tooth, you want to rinse water mixed with salt to kill bacteria found in your tooth. You also have to brush gently in the affected area. As for the food that you are going to eat, be sure that you avoid eating solid foods first while you are still waiting to visit the dentist.
Severe Toothache
According to one study, untreated tooth decay affects half of the world’s population. With this number, we can expect dental pain emergency to be quite common. When it comes to dealing with dental pain, people usually take medication such as ibuprofen to ease the discomfort.
However, tooth decay isn't the only reason why people experience severe toothache. It can also come from an impacted wisdom tooth pushing the teeth sideward. That is why you have to make sure that you pay a visit to your dentist as soon as possible. Treatment for severe toothache may range from removing the impacted tooth to having a root canal.
Broken Tooth
Having a broken tooth can be an issue. Imagine having a sharp edge rubbing against your mouth. There are different cases when this could happen. Maybe you bit something hard, or perhaps you got hit by something hard.
The first thing that you should do is to collect the pieces that have fallen off. Next, you have to assess if there’s any bleeding or if there’s damage to other parts of your mouth as well. Keep the wound clean by rinsing your mouth with water and keep the bleeding down by using a gauze.
Dental Emergencies with Kids
Kids encounter different types of dental emergencies from toothache to having a chipped tooth because of their playful nature.
Responding to dental emergencies with kids can be a bit tricky because kids typically don't have high pain tolerance. On top of that, they might even panic at the sight of their tooth being knocked off. When it comes to handling a specific dental emergency for kids, the parent or the guardian needs to act fast and should know basic first aid. And perhaps, it might even be a good idea to see where the nearest hospital or dental clinic is.
Conclusion
There are instances when dental emergencies can be avoided. Visiting your dentist regularly, having good dental hygiene, or wearing protective gear such as mouthguard when playing sports are good preventive examples on how to prevent dental emergencies.
However, if you are already facing a dental emergency, be sure to have the presence of mind to do these tips; this can help save your tooth and help lessen the discomfort.
Isreal olabanji a dental assistant and public health professionals and has years of experience in assisting the dentist with all sorts of dental issues.
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The content is intended to augment, not replace, information provided by your clinician. It is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Reading this information does not create or replace a doctor-patient relationship or consultation. If required, please contact your doctor or other health care provider to assist you to interpret any of this information, or in applying the information to your individual needs.