An emergency pediatric dentist provides urgent care for issues with your child's mouth that cannot wait for a regular appointment. This includes injuries like a knocked-out tooth. Seek emergency dental care right away if your child has a knocked-out tooth since that can be the difference between being able to save the tooth or losing it forever. Knocked-out teeth can typically be reattached if you get the child to a dentist within a few hours of the injury occurring.
The first thing parents should do when a child's tooth is knocked out is to secure the parts of the tooth they can find. If the tooth is intact, rinse it off with cold water and try to place it back in its socket. If that does not work, store the tooth in saliva or warm milk and head to an emergency pediatric dentist.
Dentists can typically reattach knocked-out teeth that are intact. If that is no longer an option, the dentist might recommend teeth replacement options like dental implants depending on if the tooth is primary or permanent.
Reattaching a knocked-out tooth typically starts with the dentist flushing debris out of the tooth's socket with water. The dentist will then reinsert the tooth into the socket if it is intact and use a splint to keep it there. If the tooth is broken, the dentist might perform a root canal before reinserting it. Generally speaking, the sooner the patient gets to the clinic, the higher the odds of being able to reattach the tooth successfully.
The tooth should reattach itself to the jawbone in about four weeks if the structures around the socket were not damaged. It might take up to eight weeks if some of these bone structures were damaged when the tooth was knocked out. The patient will come in for a follow-up appointment to examine the tooth in a few months.
If the tooth cannot be reattached, the dentist will recommend alternative treatments like:
If the knocked-out tooth is a baby tooth, a space maintainer can be used to keep the space it once occupied open, so the permanent tooth behind it erupts properly.
If a permanent tooth is knocked out and cannot be reattached, an emergency pediatric dentist might recommend replacing it with implants. Implants are metal rods or screws that are inserted in the jaw. They serve as artificial teeth roots and as bases for restorations like crowns that replace the visible part of teeth.
Another option for replacing knocked-out teeth is a dental bridge. This is an appliance that consists of two or more crowns. The crowns on either side of the missing tooth are placed over the abutment teeth, which are the healthy teeth next to the empty space where the tooth was knocked out. These abutment teeth are used as support for the false tooth, which is called a pontic, in between them. Bridges can also be supported by implants if necessary.
A knocked-out tooth requires urgent dental care, so head to our Richmond clinic immediately to get your child the care they need.
Request an appointment here: https://www.grandparkwaypediatricdental.com or call Grand Parkway Pediatric Dental at (832) 579-0960 for an appointment in our Richmond office.
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