What Are Traumatic Dental Injuries and How Are They Treated?
Dental injuries are quite a common form of tooth damage. While certain injuries can be minor, others can harm your teeth more than you can imagine. The common causes of dental injuries are trauma caused by accidents such as falling, blow, or it from someone. Let’s have a look at some dental injury facts:
A minor fracture that involves chipping of enamel only.
A deeper fracture involves both enamel and dentin of the tooth, says the endodontist near Provo.
If the pulp tissue dies, it can lead to tooth infection and abscess.
The serious fracture can expose both dentin and pulp tissue and it needs prompt treatment.
The factor that determines re-implantation of the tooth is the amount of time the tooth was out of the socket, says Dr. Bryan E. Cardon.
One should be careful while handling knocked out tooth and hold it from crown only.
Prevention of dental injuries also involves correcting the alignment of teeth with the help of braces and wearing mouthguards while participating in sports.
Common Causes of Traumatic Dental Injuries
The dentist in Springville says that trauma to the face or teeth can be caused because of auto accidents, falls, and injury from sports such as football, basketball, baseball. People who are suffering from head, neck, or facial trauma should be assessed and treated in a hospital emergency room setting. The trauma may include bleeding from nose, ears, dizziness, the lapse of memory, severe headache, and earache, as well as breaking of skull or jaws.
In majority of the hospitals oral surgeons are present who treat fractures of both the upper and lower jaw. They also perform emergency tooth removal or reconstruction of the dental arches.
Tooth fractures can be caused because of wear and tear due to cavities or chewing/ biting on hard objects such as pencils, ice cubes, nuts, hard candies. The traumatic dental injuries which are not linked to head and neck trauma can be evaluated and treated in the dental office. Such injuries consist of broken teeth, knocked out teeth, and displaced teeth.
How is Tooth Fracture Treated?
The dentist performs various tests for determining if any tooth structure is left. The dentist in Orem may also take dental x-rays which help in diagnosing, locating, and measuring the extent of tooth fractures.
Treatment Options for Serious Tooth Fractures
According to dentist near Salem, a serious fracture exposes both dentin and pulp tissue and needs prompt treatment. The serious fracture may displace and lose the tooth and cause the gums to bleed. For preventing the loose tooth from falling, the dentist can splint the loose tooth by bonding it to adjacent teeth so that it can help in stabilizing the teeth and allowing the underlying bone and gums to heal.
The dentist may also need to perform a root canal or apply only a sedative dressing on the splinted tooth for calming the pain. After three to four weeks, the splint is removed and filling or crown is placed for restoring the fractured tooth, says endodontics in 84660.
In most of the serious injuries which fracture the tooth roots, the fractured tooth becomes loose and it is unable to restore them with dental work. Thus, tooth extraction may be required. The extracted tooth is replaced with a removable plate containing a false tooth.
Treatment for Chipped Tooth
The dentist near Mapleton, UT says that minor chipping causes rough edges that irritate the cheek and tongue. The injured may not be painful or sensitive to food or temperature. A small amount of orthodontic wax or sugarless gum can be placed over the rough edge till the time you see the dentist. The risk of pulp injury is low and the treatment is usually not considered urgent.
Based on the amount of enamel loss, dental filling or placing a crown is needed for restoring the tooth to normal.
Some of these treatments can be expensive. You don’t have an insurance? No problem as the endodontics in Spanish Fork offers flexible payment options for the patients so that the treatment doesn’t burden their pocket. Lack of financial resources should not prevent you from getting the dental issue treated.
