A broken tooth is one of the few dental problems where what you do in the first hour genuinely
changes the outcome. It is worth reading this before you need it.
First, work out which one it is
Three situations, and they are handled very differently:
- A chip or a crack — part of the tooth has broken away, the rest is still in place
- A loosened or displaced tooth — still attached, but moved or wobbly
- A tooth knocked out completely — out of the socket
If a tooth has been knocked out
This is the genuine emergency, and the clock matters more than anything else in this article.
- Pick it up by the crown — the chewing part. Do not touch the root
- Do not scrub it. If it is dirty, rinse it briefly in milk or saline. Never use soap, and do not dry it
- Put it back in the socket if you can, facing the right way, and bite gently on a clean cloth to hold it
- If you cannot, keep it wet — in milk, ideally. Saliva works; hold it in the cheek if the patient is old enough not to swallow it. Plain water is the worst of the options
- Call us straight away. Within the first hour the chances are good, and they fall steadily after that
Milk is not a folk remedy — its composition keeps the cells on the root surface alive far better
than water, and those cells are what allow the tooth to reattach.
One exception: do not attempt to reimplant a baby tooth. It can damage the adult tooth
developing behind it. Keep it, and call us.
If the tooth is chipped or cracked
Less urgent, still worth handling properly. Rinse your mouth with warm water, and keep any
fragment you find — in milk, as above, since it can sometimes be bonded back on. If there is
swelling, a cold compress on the outside of the cheek helps. A temporary dental cement from the
pharmacy can cover a sharp edge that is cutting your tongue.
Take a painkiller you would normally take, but not aspirin — it thins the blood and can make
bleeding worse. And never place a painkiller directly against the gum, which burns the tissue.
If the tooth is loose or pushed out of position
Leave it alone as much as you can, stay on soft food, and call us the same day. Do not try to
force it back into place yourself.
What we will need to know when you call
How it happened, when, whether it is an adult or baby tooth, and whether you have the tooth or
fragment. If there was a blow to the head, or bleeding that will not stop after ten minutes of
firm pressure, that is a hospital matter first — we deal with the tooth afterwards.
The honest version
Most broken teeth are fixable, and quite a few knocked-out teeth are saveable if they reach us
quickly and were kept damp. The two things people get wrong are scrubbing the root clean and
storing the tooth in water. If you remember nothing else: hold it by the crown, keep it in milk,
and call us.