"Don't panic," may be good advice during an emergency, but it's not always easy to feel calm and collected when your mouth is bleeding or when you've lost a tooth. However, by following these tips and visiting your Ajax, ON, dentists, Drs. Saeid Jafarpour, Kevin Kwong, and Azza Elhaddad of Ajax Dental Centre, you can properly handle any dental emergency.
Assess Your Injury
It's impossible to determine how to handle an emergency if you don't know the extent of your injuries. Look in your mouth, or ask someone else to take a peek inside if there isn't a mirror nearby. Common types of dental emergencies include:
- Loose or Knocked-Out Teeth: Your tooth can loosen or even fall out after a blow to the mouth during a sporting event or accident.
- Broken Tooth: Strong blows can break teeth, exposing the sensitive pulp lying at the core.
- Facial and Mouth Lacerations: Do you have any cuts in/on your mouth, tongue, lips, or on your face?
- Dental Abscesses: Abscesses are bacterial infections that attack your tooth pulp. Symptoms include severe pain, fever, facial swelling, swollen lymph nodes, or pus or a pimple-liked bump on the gum near the tooth.
Perform Basic First Aid
Although you'll need to see your dentist right away if you have a dental emergency, there are a few basic first-aid steps that you can take before you make the trip to the office:
- If your loose tooth has moved out of its normal position, gently push it back in place. Don't force the tooth if it won't move easily.
- Search for your lost tooth and place it back in its socket after rinsing it in water. If it won't fit, cover it with water, saliva, or milk in a sealed container.
- Apply pressure to bleeding cuts with a clean cloth.
- Take over-the-counter pain relievers to ease pain caused by cuts, abscesses, or broken, loose, or knocked-out teeth.
- Put a little dental cement on the edges of broken teeth to dull the pain.
Call Your Ajax Dentist
All of these emergencies require prompt treatment to save your teeth and protect your oral health. Receiving treatment as soon as possible is very important, particularly if you have a knocked-out tooth. After all, if the tooth isn't reimplanted within an hour after it's knocked out, it may not be possible to save it.
Do you have a dental emergency? Call your Ajax, ON, dentists, Drs. Saeid Jafarpour, Kevin Kwong, and Azza Elhaddad of Ajax Dental Centre, at (905) 426-8304 to schedule an emergency visit.