Dental injuries happen fast. A fall on the stairs, an elbow in a pickup game, a bike that stopped sooner than the rider, a hard bite on something that should not have been in the food.
If a permanent tooth has been knocked out, time is the most important factor. Handle it by the crown, never the root, keep it moist, and call (330) 492-7889 right away. The full instructions are below and they are worth reading before you do anything else.
We are open Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and Wednesday from 7:00 AM to 2:00 PM. We are closed Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Because a knocked-out tooth cannot wait, the guidance below includes what to do when we are closed, and when a hospital is the right destination instead of a dental office.
This page is part of our emergency dental care.
Go to an Emergency Room First If
Read this before anything else. Some injuries are medical before they are dental:
- A blow to the head, loss of consciousness, confusion, or vomiting after the injury
- A jaw you cannot open or close properly, or that looks out of alignment. A possible broken jaw goes to a hospital.
- Bleeding you cannot control with steady pressure
- A deep cut to the lip, tongue, or cheek that may need stitches
- Swelling that is making it hard to breathe or swallow
- A tooth or fragment you may have inhaled or swallowed
A hospital can handle the head, jaw, and soft-tissue injuries first. The teeth can be dealt with afterward, and a knocked-out tooth can be kept viable in the meantime using the storage instructions below.
First Aid by Injury Type, Right Now
A permanent tooth knocked completely out
This is the most time-sensitive dental injury there is.
- Find the tooth. Pick it up by the crown, the chewing part, never the root. The root surface has cells that need to stay alive.
- Do not scrub it. If it is dirty, rinse it briefly in milk, or in saline, or very briefly in water. No soap, no scrubbing, no drying it off.
- If you can, put it back in the socket straight away, facing the right way, and hold it there or bite gently on a clean cloth. The socket is the best place for it.
- If you cannot reinstate it, keep it moist. Milk is the best readily available option. Saline works. Holding it inside your cheek works if there is no risk of swallowing it. Plain water is a last resort and tap water is not good for the root cells. Never let it dry out.
- Call us immediately. Getting seen quickly changes the odds considerably.
Baby teeth are different. Do not put a knocked-out baby tooth back in, because doing so can damage the adult tooth developing underneath. Call us and we will advise.
A tooth knocked loose or pushed out of position
Do not wiggle it or try to force it back. Leave it where it is, eat nothing solid, and call us. A displaced tooth often needs repositioning and stabilizing.
A broken or chipped tooth
Save any pieces you can find and keep them moist. Rinse your mouth gently with warm water. Use a cold compress on the outside of your cheek for swelling. If a sharp edge is cutting your tongue or cheek, dental wax or a piece of sugarless gum over it helps until you are seen. Call us.
A tooth pushed up into the socket
Do not touch it or try to pull it back down. Call us.
A cut lip, tongue, or cheek
Clean it gently and apply pressure with clean gauze. A cold compress helps. If the bleeding does not stop with steady pressure after about ten minutes, or the cut is deep or gaping, go to an emergency room, it may need stitches.
A broken jaw suspected
Do not try to move it. Support it gently and go to an emergency room.
A dental appliance or denture broken in the accident
Keep the pieces and do not glue anything. Call us.
What Is Dental Trauma?
Dental trauma is any physical injury to your teeth, gums, jaw, or the soft tissue in your mouth caused by force rather than by decay or disease.
It covers a range. A small chip on an edge is trauma. So is a tooth cracked below the gumline, a tooth knocked loose, a tooth driven up into the bone, and a tooth out of the mouth entirely.
Two things make trauma different from most dental problems. First, it is sudden, so there is no warning and no time to plan. Second, some of it is time-critical in hours rather than weeks, which is essentially unique in dentistry.
And a lot of trauma damage is not visible. A tooth that looks fine after an impact may have a cracked root, or a nerve that has been injured and will die over the following weeks or months. That is why an apparently minor injury still deserves an examination, and why we check the tooth again at follow-up visits.
Problems We Treat After a Dental Injury
- A knocked-out permanent tooth, repositioned and stabilized where the situation allows
- A loosened or displaced tooth, repositioned and splinted
- A chipped or broken tooth, repaired with a filling or restored more extensively
- A fractured tooth where part has broken away
- A cracked tooth with pain on biting
- Soft-tissue injuries to gums, lips, and cheeks
- A tooth that darkens after an injury, which usually means the nerve has died
- A tooth that becomes painful weeks later, which is common after trauma and easy to connect to the wrong cause
- A tooth that cannot be saved, removed with a plan for replacement
- A broken denture or appliance damaged in the accident
How We Treat a Dental Injury
- We take your history. What happened, when, and exactly how long ago. With a knocked-out tooth the timing drives everything.
- We check for the serious things first, including signs of head injury or jaw fracture. If a hospital should see you first, we say so immediately.
- We examine the teeth, gums, and soft tissue, and check whether teeth have moved or become loose.
- We take X-rays to look for root fractures, displacement, and damage to the bone.
- We test the affected teeth to assess whether the nerves are still alive, and record it so future visits have something to compare against.
- We treat what needs treating now. Repositioning and splinting a loosened tooth, reinstating a knocked-out tooth where possible, repairing a break, smoothing sharp edges, and cleaning soft-tissue injuries.
- We explain the outlook honestly, including the real possibility that a tooth may still be lost, or may need root canal treatment later.
- We arrange follow-up, which matters more after trauma than after almost anything else, because nerve damage shows up weeks or months later.
- We refer when we should. Root canal treatment is not something we provide here, so if a traumatized tooth needs one, we refer you. Jaw fractures and complex surgical cases go to an oral surgeon.
Your Options After a Dental Injury
Reinstating a knocked-out tooth, where time and condition allow. It is splinted to the neighboring teeth while the socket heals. Success depends heavily on how quickly it was handled and how it was stored, which is why the first-aid section is at the top of this page.
Repositioning and splinting a loosened or displaced tooth, holding it in place while the tissue reattaches.
Repairing a chip or break with a bonded filling, often in a single visit. For a front tooth, this restores appearance as well as function.
A crown, when too much tooth has broken away for a filling. That means a lab and two visits, since we do not offer same-day crowns.
A veneer, for a chipped front tooth once things have settled, when appearance is the remaining concern.
Referral for root canal treatment, when the nerve has died or been damaged. Very common after trauma, and often needed months after the injury rather than immediately. We do not perform root canals here, so this means a referral, and then you can come back to us for the crown or filling afterward.
Extraction and replacement, when a tooth cannot be saved. We would discuss an implant, a bridge, or a partial denture. Bear in mind that an implant needs bone, and trauma sometimes damages it, so planning early matters.
Monitoring, which is a genuine option and often the right one. A tooth that looks and tests fine after an impact may simply need watching at intervals, because problems can surface later. We would rather check it three times than treat it unnecessarily once.
The Benefits of Getting Seen Quickly
For a knocked-out tooth, speed is the treatment. The odds of saving it fall as time passes and if the root dries out. Nothing else in dentistry is quite this dependent on the first hour.
For a loosened or displaced tooth, early repositioning gives the supporting tissue the best chance of reattaching properly.
For everything else, the benefit is finding the damage you cannot see. Root fractures and nerve injuries do not announce themselves, and a tooth that seems fine can fail six months later. An examination and a baseline record now means that if the tooth does change, we notice quickly rather than starting from scratch.
There is also the plain matter of a sharp broken edge, which cuts your tongue and cheek repeatedly until it is smoothed. That is a five-minute fix that improves your week considerably.
How to Know a Dental Injury Needs Attention
Call immediately for:
- A permanent tooth knocked out
- A tooth loose, moved, or pushed into the gum
- A tooth broken with a large piece missing, or with pink or red visible in the break
- Severe pain after an injury
- Bleeding from the socket that will not settle
- A tooth you cannot bite on at all after an impact
Get seen, and it can be scheduled:
- A small chip with no pain
- A rough or sharp edge
- Mild sensitivity after an impact
- A tooth that feels slightly different but is not loose or painful
Weeks or months later, still call about:
- A tooth that has turned grey, dark, or yellow since the injury
- New pain in a previously injured tooth
- A small swelling or bump on the gum above an injured tooth
- A tooth that has become loose long after the accident
That last group matters and is the one most often missed. Trauma damage frequently shows up long after the event, and by then people no longer connect it to the accident.
Go to an emergency room for head injury, a suspected broken jaw, uncontrolled bleeding, a deep cut needing stitches, or swelling affecting breathing or swallowing.
What waiting actually costs. With a knocked-out tooth, waiting costs the tooth. That is the bluntest version of this section anywhere in this content set, and it is accurate. Beyond that: a displaced tooth left unrepositioned may heal in the wrong position or lose its attachment. A cracked tooth left open to bacteria can become infected, turning a repair into a referral or an extraction. A nerve injury left unchecked can become an abscess that damages the surrounding bone, and lost bone is bone you would want later for an implant, which means grafting on top. And a sharp edge left as it is keeps injuring your tongue and cheek daily.
What we see that you cannot. Whether the root is fractured, which is invisible above the gum and decides whether the tooth is savable. Whether the tooth has been pushed into the bone, which is easy to miss. Whether the nerve is still alive, which we test and record so later changes are measurable. Whether the bone around the tooth was damaged. And whether neighboring teeth that seem untouched were also affected, which is common and frequently overlooked.
Questions worth asking yourself. Exactly how long ago did this happen? Do I have the tooth or the fragment, and how has it been stored? Can I bite normally? Has anything changed color since? Did I hit my head, and how hard? That last one decides whether you call us or go to a hospital.
What Does Treating a Dental Injury Cost?
Cost depends entirely on the injury. Smoothing a sharp edge, bonding a chip, splinting a loosened tooth, reinstating a knocked-out tooth, and removing and replacing a tooth are very different treatments at very different prices.
Injuries arrive without warning and usually at a bad financial moment, so we will tell you what we found and what treatment costs before doing anything beyond making you safe and comfortable. Stabilizing an urgent situation comes first, and the larger conversation happens once you are out of trouble.
If the injury happened at work, in a car accident, or in a sporting context, other coverage may apply, and medical coverage sometimes handles injury differently from dental coverage. Tell us how it happened, it can matter for your claim.
We go over your dental benefits and your coverage before treatment. We take cash, check, and credit cards, and we offer CareCredit financing.
Insurance carriers accepted have not been confirmed for this practice yet, so no plan or coverage level is named here.
Frequently Asked Questions
My tooth was knocked out. What do I do right now?
Pick it up by the crown, not the root. Do not scrub it. If you can, put it back in the socket and hold it there. If you cannot, keep it moist in milk and call us immediately. Do not let it dry out.
Can a knocked-out tooth really be saved?
Sometimes, and the odds depend heavily on how fast it is handled and how it was stored. It is always worth trying, which is why the storage instructions matter so much.
What if it happens when you are closed?
We are closed Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Keep the tooth moist in milk, call us and follow the instructions on the message, and if you have a head injury, uncontrolled bleeding, a possible broken jaw, or swelling affecting breathing, go to an emergency room, where they can also advise on the tooth.
My child knocked out a baby tooth. Should I put it back?
No. Putting a baby tooth back can damage the adult tooth developing underneath. Keep it, call us, and we will tell you what to do.
My tooth looks fine after the accident. Do I still need to be seen?
Yes. Root fractures and nerve damage are not visible and can show up weeks or months later. An examination now gives us a baseline to compare against, which is genuinely useful if the tooth changes.
My tooth turned grey after an injury. What does that mean?
Usually that the nerve inside has died. It often needs root canal treatment, which we refer out, and sometimes internal whitening or a veneer afterward to address the color. Get it looked at.
Do you do root canals for injured teeth?
No. If a traumatized tooth needs root canal treatment, we diagnose it and refer you to a provider who does that work. You can come back to us for the restoration afterward.
Will you use sedation to treat my injury?
No, sedation is not something we offer. We use local anesthetic to numb the area, which is effective for this kind of treatment.
How do I prevent this happening again?
A mouthguard for contact sports is the single most effective thing, and it prevents a large share of sporting dental injuries. Whether this practice makes custom sports mouthguards has not been confirmed yet.
Related Services
Injury care usually leads to one of these:
- Toothache and pain relief covers pain that is not from an injury.
- Dental fillings repair a chipped or broken tooth.
- Tooth extractions are the answer when a tooth cannot be saved.
- Dental implants and bridges replace a tooth lost to trauma.
- Dental veneers restore the appearance of a chipped front tooth.
- Digital X-rays reveal root fractures and displacement.
Injured a Tooth? Call Us in North Canton
If a tooth has been knocked out, loosened, or broken, call (330) 492-7889 now and tell us what happened. If we are closed and you have a head injury, uncontrolled bleeding, or swelling affecting your breathing, go to an emergency room first.
