Young people are most at risk of having trauma to their front teeth.  If you think about it, their young faces are all teeth.  When the front teeth first erupt, they seem way too large for their mouths and they seem to stick out.  This is an accident waiting to happen.

     Last week, I treated a beautiful 9 year old little girl.  She broke both of her upper front teeth almost to the gum line.  The breaks exposed the nerves of both teeth causing her lots of pain.

     I had to remove the nerve tissue and replace it with a root canal filling.  She did not feel any pain at all after I numbed the area.  The real pain will be having to put up with crowns on these previously perfectly formed teeth for the rest of her life.

     Almost a month ago, I saw a 15 year old boy that had been hit in the mouth with an elbow playing basketball.  His left front tooth was knocked out onto the gym floor.  When he arrived at my office the next day, he pulled his tooth out of his pocket with lint stuck to it.  He and his parents wanted me to put it back in.  Granted, this is not the usual situation I see when teeth are knocked out.  Any way, as you might expect, the tooth cannot be re-implanted after that amount of time.

     If you have young ones playing sports, please insist that they wear a mouth
guard at all times while playing.

     If you ever see someone have a tooth knocked out, try to have them replace it themselves or you can try immediately.  If that is not an option, put the tooth in milk and get to a dentist as soon as possible.  If a tooth is out of the mouth longer than 1 hour, there is almost no chance of it reattaching.  And that is even if it is kept wet.  If it is dry, the time out of the mouth is significantly less than an hour.

     As you can see, time is of the essence when teeth are knocked out of the mouth.  Even when all the rules are followed, the human body can react in some uncertain ways.  Teeth can be rejected by the body, they can dissolve and be replaced by bone, they can grow onto the bone becoming rigid among other problems.

     Thank you for taking your time with me.

     Have a joyous Holiday Season!

   David Allison