Accidents With Facial Trauma And Potential Tooth Damage

Posted on Posted in Advice

Here’s what to do next in Burton.

It’s everyone’s worst nightmare; that moment when you are happily going about your daily life, whether driving your car (or as a passenger) or even walking or cycling, when all of a sudden, your car is in an accident or you hit a pothole and fall from your bike or simply walk into a lamppost. We might do all that we can to avoid these accidents, but sometimes these things are out of our control.

The key thing is what you do next. The most obvious thing to do is to call an ambulance if the accident is serious enough or go to your A&E, especially if you have hit your head in any significant way. It is always best to get this checked out even if you feel fine. Once you have been given the all clear or have received appropriate treatment you should give our Burton dental clinic a call to make an emergency dental appointment if the mouth area was impacted.

Thorough check up

If there has been a significant impact in this area, we will first of all, visually check your teeth and take x-rays as well if we feel it necessary to do so. We always work on the basis that it is better to be safe than sorry when it comes to our patient’s dental care.

If there has been a significant impact, it is quite likely that there has been some damage caused. Where this is the case, you can be sure that we will provide you with the most appropriate treatments to restore your teeth to a healthy and functional state.

Chipped and cracked teeth

This is one of the most likely types of damage, especially if the trauma was relatively minor. In most cases, this will be restorable either with fillings, composite or dental veneers, especially if you are keen to restore their appearance too.

Broken teeth

More significant accidents may well result in teeth being broken. In this situation, we will assess the degree of damage and decide on the course of action to be taken. Where a tooth is too severely damaged or has a very poor prognosis, we may recommend that it is extracted. While nobody wants to lose a tooth, there are excellent artificial teeth replacements available, including dental implants. If a decision is taken to restore the tooth, we may be able to fill it but more significant damage may require the fitting of dental crowns to both give it a natural appearance and also sufficient strength for daily use.

Knocked out teeth

If you lose a tooth, or teeth, and circumstances allow, you should collect the teeth if you can, making sure to touch the crown party only. Put these in a container filled with saliva, or milk if available and contact SG Dental and Implant Centre straight away. If you arrive quickly enough, there is a chance that they can be replaced and may survive, although this is not guaranteed.

When tooth loss has occurred and the above solution is not an option, we will ensure that the now empty tooth socket is cleaned and allowed to heal properly. We will also discuss with you your options for replacing it if you wish to. While some patients don’t replace missing teeth if they are not visible, we do recommend that you do so as gaps in the teeth can cause other teeth to move and may lead to an incorrect bite.

There are a number of tooth replacement options available and we will discuss these with you to determine the most appropriate one for you. For patients that would like to have dental implants but find the cost of the treatment prohibitive, we can also discuss the various treatment plans that we have available that will help you to spread the cost of the treatment.

Let us take a brief look then at the various options to replace a missing tooth.

Dental bridge

Depending on where the missing teeth are, a dental bridge might be an option. To fit these the missing teeth are replaced by replacement artificial teeth with crowns attached at either end. In order to fit this, the natural teeth on either side of the gap will need to be prepared in order for the bridge to be fitted. This does provide a fairly stable tooth replacement but the preparation of otherwise healthy teeth may be a deterrent for some.

Dentures

This is one of the most popular and widely used tooth replacement methods currently available. Requiring, in most cases, no invasive dentistry and also being the most affordable, this is probably not surprising. While dentures can provide an aesthetically satisfactory solution, some wearers find that they become unstable; moving around in the mouth and leading to soreness of the gums.

Dental implants

For anyone looking to have the most natural and effective tooth replacement solution possible, we can’t recommend dental implants highly enough. Although these are more expensive than the other options and do require dental surgery, they provide the best experience possible. The fact that the implants are placed into the jawbone and provide a replacement for the missing tooth roots, ensure that your new replacement teeth offer extremely strong and stable alternatives to your missing teeth.

Naturally, we hope that we never see any of our Burton patents under these circumstances, but if we do, you can be sure that you will be in good hands. To make an emergency dental appointment or to book a general check up with us, please call SG Dental and Implant Centre on 01283 845345 and speak to one of our welcoming reception team.