Children often knock out a tooth due to activity-related trauma. If your child has knocked out an adult or permanent tooth, immediately look for the tooth if your child doesn't still have it. Possessing the tooth makes the dental treatment process a lot easier.

How can your family dentistry specialist help if your child has knocked out, but found, an adult tooth?

Replantation

Having the natural tooth that was broken out allows the dentist to perform a procedure called replantation. You want to get your child to the dentist as soon as possible for replantation to work.

For this procedure, the dentist will clean and sterilize both the mouth area where the tooth was and the actual tooth itself. The dentist can then insert the tooth back into its original socket and press it into place. Gauze and a splint are used to hold the tooth in place until the tissue and bone start to heal back around the base of the tooth.

The splint used is a piece of metal wire that anchors the replanted tooth to a strong neighboring tooth. The splint isn't meant to exert pressure, which could knock the tooth back out, but rather to hold the tooth upright. Your child will be given a course of antibiotics as a precaution and the stint will be left in for at least a week or two.

Dental Implant

Replantation doesn't fully cure the knocked out tooth but rather keeps the tooth healthy enough to function until your child's mouth stops growing. An artificial dental crown can't be used to strengthen the tooth as crowns require a more stable structure for support. Longer term dental replacments such as bridges or dental implants can't be placed until your child's teeth and bones have stopped growing and shifting. Once your child's mouth reaches full development, which tends to happen in early adulthood, the dentist will likely propose a dental replacement option.

Dental implants are a popular dental replacement

. The implants have a metal root that is inserted into the jawbone, which provides added stability but also helps promote healthy jawbone growth. Your child will have to undergo a healing period as the bone heals around the bone. Then the artificial crown is attached and your child's treatment for the lost tooth is fully completed.

Note that dental replacements, like all dental appliances, don't have a natural lifespan and will likely need to be replaced. The implant will eventually loosen or crack and your child will simply need to visit the dentist for a replacement. A new implant every decade or two still beats having nothing in the tooth gap or losing bone density due to going with another dental replacement like a bridge or partial denture. For more information, talk to a professional like Carpenter Dental, Charles M. Carpenter DMD, and Chas M. Carpenter DMD.