Occasionally, some patients will experience an injury to the mouth during treatment. Dental emergencies while wearing braces or other orthodontic appliances generally fall into two categories.
EMERGENCIES RELATED TO ORTHODONTIC APPLIANCES
Sometimes, appliances might be broken or bent during your orthodontic care.
If there are any disturbances such as loose bands, loose brackets, broken or poking wires, please call our office for an appointment during patient hours. It’s usually not an emergency, but we want to know when something is loose.
For your convenience and the convenience of scheduled patients, it is not possible to handle emergencies on a walk in basis.
Here are some helpful hints to remedy some of the problems you may encounter until you can get to our office.
- A loose band or bracket can generally be left in place until seen in our office. Call us and leave a message when you notice a loose band or bracket. We will schedule you to reattach the loose brace or appliance, if we need to, after reviewing your chart. Not every loose brace is an emergency, but we do want to be informed when it happens so we can document your chart.
- Try and describe how it happened and review our Brace Watcher’s Diet page to avoid further breakages.
- A broken or poking wire can often be bent in with a pencil eraser or cut with nail clippers. Call our office during patient hours or leave a voice message or send us an email if you do not feel that you have been able to resolve the problem properly.
- Watch this video below on YouTube that explains how to handle an orthodontic emergency.
Following a direct injury to your mouth or teeth, whether undergoing orthodontic care or not, immediately ice the injured area and you should contact your regular dentist as soon as possible.
If a tooth is displaced, knocked out or fractured, this is a problem for your dentist, first, not your orthodontist.
Usually, an x-ray of the involved tooth or teeth is needed to determine the extent of injury. Orthodontists may not have the necessary materials or anesthesia required to treat these injuries.
If your braces or appliances are dislodged or displaced, we will need to replace or adjust them as soon as possible, depending upon the comfort level of the patient, but only after you have seen your general dentist, first.
After Office Hours
If an orthodontic emergency arises where the patient is in pain after hours, please call our office. Information is available regarding on our outgoing voice message regarding who to contact for further assistance.
