How to Prepare for Dental Emergencies

If you had a dental accident or emergency, would you know how to handle it? Being prepared for dental emergencies is as important as being prepared for any other kind of emergencies. Our Encino dentist offers emergency dental care. 

Prevention

Many dental emergencies can be avoided with good dental habits. Brush and floss your teeth to remove disease-causing bacteria and plaque. Visit our office at least twice a year so that we can catch early signs of problems and replace old, worn restorations when necessary. Wear a night guard if you grind your teeth in your sleep, and wear a protective mouthguard if you engage in athletic activities.

Periodically check your own mouth for signs of problems, such as sharp edges on teeth, pain, irritation or restorations that are loose or showing damage. Addressing issues quickly can prevent them from worsening. 

First Aid

Your best efforts might not be able to prevent all dental emergencies. Because of this, you need to keep a dental first aid kit close at hand. With the tools in your kit, you can manage common dental emergencies until you can reach our office.

Stock your first aid kit with: 

·        Nitrile or latex gloves for protection

·        Alcohol wipes to clean blood or remove dirt

·        Cotton or gauze to stop bleeding

·        Salt to create a soothing rinse

·        Dental floss to remove debris

·        Topical anesthetic and over-the-counter pain relievers to ease pain

·        Temporary dental cement to protect injured teeth or reattach crowns that have been dislodged

·        Dental wax to cover damaged orthodontic appliances or sharp tooth edges

·        Treating Dental Emergencies 

Although first aid can stabilize your dental health temporarily, it cannot replace professional care. This is especially true if you have lost a restoration, cracked or broken a tooth, dislodged a tooth or knocked a tooth out. In these situations, seeking dental care as soon as possible is vital, and with a knocked-out or dislodged tooth, it is essential that you seek care immediately. Call our office today to learn more or to schedule an appointment with our emergency dentist in Encino. 

How Effective are Braces?

Our office works with many orthodontic patients as well as patients who would like to learn more about braces. Our dentist and our staff frequently hear questions from those who want to know if braces are effective.

Our dental office is proud that we give our patients helpful and relevant information. Even after decades of practice, our braces dentist in San Francisco is still helping patients get beautiful and straight smiles.

While there are a few main kinds of braces, we find that the traditional wired braces are most effective across a wide range of orthodontic problems. Dental problems like poorly aligned teeth, crossbites, overbites, malocclusions, underbites, and other misalignments all respond well to metal braces. Wired braces consist of brackets, bonding adhesive, archwire, and ligature bands. To place braces, our dentist attaches the brackets to the patient’s teeth and carefully guides the archwire through the brackets. Finally, he attaches rubber bands to the wires. These will control the pressure of the braces.

These are popular variations of wired braces.

• Clear braces- The very popular clear braces work just as wired braces do. The main difference is clear braces are often known as invisible because the brackets are see-through or tooth-colored. The clear braces are a bit less durable than wired braces. Because of this our dentist does not recommend clear braces for severe misalignments requiring a great deal of pressure.

• Lingual braces- These braces have wires and brackets placed on the inside of the mouth by attaching to the back of the teeth. The way lingual braces work in the same way as traditional metal braces.

Invisalign- While these are not technically braces, they are an effective orthodontic treatment. A set of transparent plastic alignment trays modeled from molds or digital scans of a patient’s teeth. The trays fit over the upper and lower teeth and move the teeth to the optimal position.

If you are interested in finding out more about the types of braces, call our office. We can answer your questions and make an appointment for your consultation.