Hi this is Dr. Antolak from thegentledentist.com in Shelby Township, Michigan, 586-247-3500 is our phone number. And today I’m holding a little mannequin of teeth and the cool thing about this is that these teeth come out okay? And the purpose of what I want to talk about today is dental emergencies that happen from traumatic events can take place anytime from riding a bicycle to playing hockey, to baseball, anything like that. And, what can happen is a number of different levels of things can take place. And what I want to do is talk to you about those from the simple to the more complex. First of all, the simple would be if, for example, if a child is on a bicycle, fall and let’s say, a part of their adult tooth breaks off. The little piece of a shard of the tooth comes off and a part of it. It’s best to recover that little piece first, and then keep it in water. And the reason why that is, is if you come to our office right away, not all offices are like this. But if you come right away and contact us, I can take that little piece and segment and, literally, we can bond them together with an adhesive material. And many times it goes fine for a long period of time, and it matches best. It’s best if you could try to recover that small piece, and then deal with that. Even if it’s a larger piece, if you can try to recover whatever fell, or came out. And when you call our office, then we can use that, a lot of times, to help it look the best and blend in.
And the worst case situation is when you have a traumatic accident where the tooth actually falls out. We’ve seen plenty of those cases. So, if that tooth comes out, then what the first, important thing to do is that we want to try to get that in the mouth as soon as possible, back into the socket itself. If you can, try to, if you have access to some water, just kind of rinse it off just to get the dirt and debris off. Then place that right back into that socket how it came out, is if you could orient it, the better it is you can orient it. So, a good idea is to look at the opposite side of the tooth that fell out and see how the tooth is oriented. Either his teeth are shaped like this and this goes towards the lip site here. This part here is concave like that or convex. That goes toward the lip side. The concave part goes towards the tongue side. And so when you consider that try to put that in as quickly as possible. If it’s impossible to do that or there’s too much trauma taken place you can put that into milk if you have to. There are actually solutions that are out there that could be used to store teeth that have fallen out and I know last for quite some time. Like I said, the best place to do is to put it, don’t let it moisten out, don’t scrub it. There are specific attachments that attach to the tooth itself, and we don’t want to rub those off. That’s what’s important about giving that to reattach. And then call your dentist right away. If they have an emergency phone line, call right away and see if you can get in from that and if you don’t our phone number’s 586-247-3500 and our office is if you call that number and hit extension 4, it will be directly sent to my cell phone and I will answer that call. Other problems that could take place in that is a tooth with just kind of fall it will loosen up a little bit. But as long as it can stay, keep that tooth in that socket as much as you can and locate the tooth a little bit. Try to, if you can, if it’s possible, after it happens, try to push that tooth into a spot and just leave it until you can, can get into the office. And what we’ll do is we’ll secure like a little wire around that tooth and try to just bond it to the adjacent teeth just to keep it stable long enough so we can start to re-attach. Anyway if there are any questions you have. If you do have an emergency you give us a call at 586 247-3500. If it’s after hours hit the number 4. If you don’t get a hold of me right away just leave a message and we will call you back as soon as we can. Thank you and have a great day.