Emergency Children's Dental Care
As most parents are aware, kids tend to be accident-prone. At the Children’s Center for Dentistry, we make it easy for your kids to get same-day emergency care to relieve pain, treat the problem, and plan for any necessary future treatment.
Since Murphy’s Law dictates that most accidents and emergencies will happen outside of normal working hours, our doctors are on-call until 9:00pm for our established patients.
Kids’ Dental Emergencies
What does a dental emergency look like in a child?
Some of the most common emergencies we see here in our office are:
- Broken or severely chipped teeth
- Prematurely lost teeth (both baby and permanent)
- Sudden tooth pain
- Abscesses
- Injured lips and gums
- Foreign objects caught between the teeth
While we are able to treat most dental emergencies, some situations do call for a more intensive level of care. If your child is experiencing any of the following, head for the nearest emergency room or call 911 right away:
- Bleeding that does not stop with pressure
- Nausea or vomiting following a head injury
- Disorientation or loss of consciousness following a head injury
- A possible broken jaw
Abscesses and Infections
Just like adults, children can develop infections in the teeth and gums. The symptoms that indicate your child has an abscess or infection include:
- Gum pain
- A pimple-like lesion on the gums
- Pus in the gums or between the teeth
- Tooth sensitivity
- Discoloration
- Fever and lethargy
If you suspect an infection, call us right away. Dental infections can start out minor and then quickly progress, even spreading through the body.
When Your Child Loses a Tooth Too Early
Many parents are unaware that damaging or losing a baby tooth before it’s ready to come out qualifies as a dental emergency. After all, the tooth was just going to come out on its own, right?
Losing a baby tooth too early can cause problems with your child’s developing permanent teeth. If the tooth was lost in an injury, we’ll want to check to make sure that it completely came out and that no bits of root or tooth structure remain in the gums. If there are, they could result in an abscess – a serious dental infection.
Baby teeth also serve as “placeholders” for the permanent teeth. When one is lost too soon, the others may drift slightly. If this happens, the permanent teeth may come in twisted or behind other teeth. We can hold the place, if necessary, with space holders to prevent this from happening (and help you avoid costly orthodontics in the future).
If your child has any type of oral injury (even if the teeth aren’t lost), you should still give us a call. Trauma can cause the roots of the teeth to die. If this happens, infection could set in, making your child sick and damaging the permanent teeth. We can monitor the situation with x-rays to confirm that your child’s teeth are still healthy or to plan treatment if they are not.
Just like you, we want the best for your children, and the Children's Center for Dentistry caters to kids. If your child has injured a tooth or has any other type of dental emergency, call us right away at 309-827-KIDS(5437) so we can get to work and solve the problem.
