Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Catching a baseball with your teeth

This youngster tried to catch a baseball with his teeth. Tooth #9 was partially avulsed. Luckily his neighbor is a dental hygenist and knew to re-implant the tooth immediately. They called the general dentist and were at his office within 30 minutes of the accident. I got the call from the doctor to review the guidelines for treatment. As you can see, this is an immature root. Here are the guidelines for treatment of a tooth like this.

ON SITE TX:

  • Immediately rinse/gently remove foreign objects. If unable to replant tooth at site of injury then use a transport media to get to dentist - milk, saline or saliva.

  • If the tooth is not reimplanted, and a transport media is not used, the emergency treatment by the doctor must be done within 1 hour. (If the tooth is dry for greater than an hour, reimplantation by the dentist is generally not indicated)

AT DR'S OFFICE:

  • Clean off affected area (water, saline or chlorhexidine) - don't extract tooth if it has been re-implanted.

  • If the tooth is out of the mouth, prepare it for reimplantation by: cleaning with saline, soak in 1mg/20ml doxycycline, remove coagulum from socket with saline, reposition the socket wall if fractured, gently replant the tooth with finger pressure.

  • Take radiograph to verify position

  • Flexible splint (fishing line, mild steel wire)

  • Antibiotic Rx: Doxycyline 2x/day for 7 days or Penicillin 4x/day for 7 days

  • Tetnus booster

7-10 DAYS LATER:

  • Remove splint

  • Begin to monitor for re-vascularization (thermal testing baselines)

3-6 MONTHS:

  • Continue to monitor - avoid endodontic treatment unless obvious signs of non-healing are present (pain, swelling, increasing radiolucency). It may take 3 months for the tooth to respond to thermal testing again.

  • If endodontic treatment is necessary, follow guidelines for Apexification.

For more information regarding treatment of traumatic injuries: click here

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
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dentist sydney said...

Good job to those dentists who treated this kid. It would have been a lot better if the kid had never attempted this kind of stunt with his teeth.

Healthysmiles said...

This is a such a helpful information. thanks for sharing this information.