Insurance

Tips for Dealing with Situations beyond Your Dental Health Plan

Even though you have a dental health plan, there are sometimes things that are going to happen that are not foreseen. Two of these things are toothaches and knocked-out teeth. Here are tips on how you can deal with these two situations.

Toothache – Rinse out your mouth using warm water. This is going to clean it out.  Very gently use some floss to remove debris or food from the tooth.  Don’t use a painkiller or aspirin near or on the tooth that is aching.  Also don’t put it against your gums. It could burn them. If the toothache goes on, go to the dentist.

Knocked-out tooth – Look for the tooth.  This could be really hard if it happened while skateboarding, on the playground, or on the basketball court.  If you find it, hold it by its crown and then rinse its root using water if it’s dirty.  Don’t scrub the tooth or remove any tissue fragments which are attached. If you can, gently insert the tooth into the socket, and hold it there on the way to your dentist.  If you can’t, put your tooth in a cup filled with saline, saliva, or milk and take it to your dentist.  You only have so much time to get to the dentist to have it re-implanted.  If it’s been over an hour, chances are it can’t be implanted again.