Fighting tooth and nail

Accidents happen without notice! Same with dental emergencies, but if you are updated on ways to handle an emergency situation, it can spell the difference between a ‘lost’ and reclaimed ‘tooth’.

Handling dental emergencies

1. Broken tooth
Seeing your child with a broken tooth can be a gut-wrenching sight. Keep patience and do the following—

• Carefully rinse the tooth in water. Make sure that you do not touch the root of the tooth with your hands. The root is the portion of the tooth embedded in the gum and not normally seen.
• Attempt to place the tooth back in its socket and secure with a wet wrap. If this is not possible or if you are afraid that your child might swallow the tooth, place it in a glass containing either saliva or milk.
  See your dentist immediately.

2. Chipped tooth
Check to see if your child is experiencing pain or sensitivity in the tooth. If so call your dentist to seek dental treatment immediately. In case your child is fine, contact your dentist to see whether or not your child should be seen. In most cases of chipped teeth, you can simply schedule a future appointment to replace the lost portion of the tooth with a porcelain veneer or with bonding material.

3. Bitten Tongue or Lip
Clean the area gently with a cloth and then apply cold compresses to reduce the swelling. If the bleeding does not stop, go to a hospital emergency room immediately.

4. Objects Caught Between the Teeth
Try to gently remove the object with dental floss and avoid damaging the gums. Do not use a sharp instrument. The best item to use is a plastic toothpick that has an angulated tip. If not successful in removing the object, visit your dentist.

5. Toothache
Rinse your mouth with warm water to clean out the area. Make sure there is no food or any other object lodged around the tooth. Use dental floss to clean the area thoroughly.
Never put aspirin or any other painkiller on the gums or around the painful tooth because it can burn the gums, thus causing more harm than good.

Preventing dental injuries

The best way to prevent a dental emergency is to properly protect your child. Increasingly, dentists are recommending that children engaged in sports wear mouth guards. Once only used in football and ice hockey, mouth guards are now being recommended for other sports as well. Most mouth guards are made of plastic and cover the lower teeth.

Not only do mouth guards protect teeth but they also protect lips, gums, and cheeks. Commonly there are two types of mouth guards:
Another way to reduce the risk of dental injury is to watch out for situations that commonly lead to injury. These are some of the more common:

• Trips and falls - Falling into furniture and down stairs often causes dental injury. This is most likely to occur when children are first learning to stand using furniture to maintain balance. If you have a baby childproof your home before he learns to walk.
• Water fountains - Often kids injure teeth by ramming them into the spout of water fountains as they drink. Sometimes kids behind them accidentally bump into them causing them to injure their teeth.
• Forks and Spoons - Believe it or not, some injuries are self-inflicted when people, not paying attention, crack or chip their teeth with spoons or forks as they eat.
• Bottle Caps - Tell your child to never open a bottle cap by teeth.

If you have young children at home make sure that your dentist has after hours coverage, which means there will be a qualified dentist available to take care of emergencies and keep the phone number handy.

Dr. Ramesh Mathur, Chairman Max International Dental Academy