Dental Trauma, Tooth Avulsion: Got Milk?

As you may know, we at Dr. Jerry Vasilakos’ dental office in Toronto, Ontario, schedule strategic times in our day for emergency appointments. We’ve left these spots open with the understanding that some issues crop up at the most inopportune times, and need to be dealt with right away.

One such emergency is tooth avulsion: when a tooth has become completely dislodged from its socket.

This can be a particularly drastic issue, and it can occur in a number of ways: you might receive a heavy blow to the face, or you might fall and hit your face. This could result in a fractured tooth or, in severe cases, a complete avulsion of the tooth from the socket.

For best results, it’s crucial to get the tooth back into its socket as soon as possible. Sometimes this is doable (a good opportunity to make use of Planet Dentistry’s emergency appointments!), but at other times this just might not be possible.

If you’re unable to get the tooth back to its socket right away, the next best thing is to preserve the tooth, along with the attached ligament.

It’s not a complicated process—in fact, you likely already have our suggested preservation medium: milk. (For the lactose intolerant, saliva is the next best choice.)

If reattachment is successful, 100 percent of cases require root canal therapy, due to the loss of blood supply causing the nerve to lose its vitality. This can be easily dealt with after attachment has occurred.

However, if the tooth does not reattach and cannot be re-implanted into the socket, other restorative procedures may be necessary. Some methods are a dental implant, a bridge, or a removable partial denture.

But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Your only job is to find the proper preservation medium. Don’t panic, just remember: got milk?