The main problem with dental emergencies is that, unfortunately, they are often ignored by both parents and older children. Although this can be a problem with adults, it is usually a lot more serious for children because they have years ahead of them, and ignoring a dental emergency could affect their future lives negatively. Here are three instances where you should seek the help of a medical professional.
Broken Tooth/Teeth
Any child who is even mildly outgoing can chip a tooth or two at times from a fall, but whether it’s an emergency or not depends totally on the degree of damage. Even a slight chip will need to be filled out by a dentist soon, but it’s not necessarily an emergency. However, if the tooth or multiple teeth have actually broken off in chunks, that definitely qualifies as an emergency!
The dentist will assess the damage and then tell you whether the child needs a pulp treatment or not. The good news is that even mostly broken teeth can be quite convincingly repaired, provided that the parents treated it as the dental emergency which it was, and acted in time.
Complete Dislodging of the Teeth from the Gum Socket
In very rare cases, the entire tooth could be dislodged from a child’s gum socket after an adequately bad fall or trauma to the face.
Of course, if it’s just a loose milk tooth that came out, there is no reason to worry about that too much, and more attention should be given to how severe the trauma to the head was. However, if it’s one of the final pairs, immediate action can save your child’s natural tooth from being lost permanently.
Collect the dislodged tooth, put it in an icebox, grab your child, and rush to the emergency dental services. If you were able to do all of this fast enough, more often than not, the dentists/orthodontists will be able to reinstall the natural teeth without damage.
Cracked/Broken Jaw or Jaw Dislocation
A dislocated jaw is much easier to notice, but a cracked jaw isn’t. If your child is complaining of severe pain after a fall or a blow to the face, it’s time to call the emergency dental services immediately.
Even compared to severely chipped or cracked teeth, a broken, cracked and/or dislocated jaw is going to be a lot more painful for the child, as well as being debilitating. In case he/she cannot even open his/her mouth properly, it’s not good news and is, more often than not, indicative of bone and joint damage.
Once again, the early age of the child will make sure that as long as he/she was brought in time to a reputed emergency dental clinic with pediatric care, it will heal flawlessly in a majority of the cases.
On the plus side of things, unlike adults, children heal better and have a long time ahead of them to get used to any changes which may at times be necessary to maintain one’s wellbeing after recovering from an emergency dental situation. Timely action is pretty much the only thing parents need to ensure, and an awesome dentist or orthodontist will do the rest.
