Emergency Dental Care: Know Your Options And Decide Ahead Of Time

If you play a rough sport such as hockey or boxing, you may find that you have several more dental emergencies than you planned. If this is your first time seeking out emergency dental care, you will find that your options are limited because time is limited when your damaged teeth need help. It helps to know in advance of a dental emergency what your options are and what you will choose before you get into the dentist's chair. 

Loose Teeth

Hopefully you, your trainer or coach, and/or your partner or teammates have the foresight to put your knocked-out teeth on ice. The ice will keep your living teeth from dying before your dentist can reinsert them into your mouth. You should have also packed your bleeding and open gums with a lot of sterile gauze to control the bleeding.

Next, your dentist will have to cut the open gums down to the jawbone, exposing the areas where the loose teeth once resided. He or she will reinsert the tooth, apply a dental bonding agent around the crown where it meets your jawbone, then stitch the gum tissue back up over the teeth. Over the next couple of weeks, you will have to revisit the dentist to make sure the blood flow has returned to the teeth that were knocked out, and that these teeth have not died during that time.

Missing Teeth

Whether your sport of choice knocked your teeth so far out you could not find them or an accident caused your teeth to go missing in the brush, you are still in need of emergency dental care. Your dentist can insert implant screws in the open gums where your original teeth were, and then craft you implants to pop onto the screws within a few days. If you forego any dental care right after you lose your teeth, it will be far more painful and costly to get dental implants later, since your dentist will have to surgically cut open the gums that have healed and closed over.

Damaged Gum Tissue

If your gum tissue is so badly damaged that you can only cut some of it away and try and save what is left, then you should know that this is a possibility ahead of time. Your dentist will try to save as much of the healthy gingiva as possible, but without teeth and refusing immediate implant surgery, he or she will have to close up the holes left behind. Closing the holes in damaged gum tissue is important because it saves the teeth in the surrounding area and prevents oral infections that could cost you more lost teeth and the excising of any gum tissue that would die from a lack of healthy nerves and blood supply.