Saturday, December 26, 2009
Injuries to the Teeth
Isolated injuries to teeth are quite common. Children often sustain damage to teeth during falls, sports, and skateboarding or bicycle accidents. Such traumatic injuries can usually be effectively treated in our office, avoiding the inconvenience and cost of an emergency room visit. In order to repair teeth which have been displaced or "knocked out," we carefully repositioning the teeth and splint the teeth until they are healed. Splinting stabilizes the unstable teeth by securing them to the adjacent healthy teeth for several weeks.
If a permanent tooth is "knocked out", it should immediately be placed in cold milk, or better yet, back into the socket (We don’t typically attempt replantation of baby teeth). The sooner the tooth is re-inserted into its socket, the better for the survival of the tooth. The patient should be seen in our office as soon as possible. Although gentle rinsing is advisable, never attempt to wipe the tooth off, since the living cells of the tooth ligament may be injured or killed, lessening the success of replantation. After the acute treatment in our office, we may call upon other dentists such as an endodontist, who may be asked to perform root canal therapy, or a restorative dentist, who may need to repair or rebuild fractured teeth. In the event that injured teeth can not be saved or repaired, dental implants are typically utilized to replace traumatically lost teeth.
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