If your tooth falls out, you need to act fast! You only have minutes, not hours before you can see your dentist.
First off, find the tooth. Hold it on the side of the crown – the end that you normally see. The other end, the one that was lodged inside the gum and not visible, is the root – do not touch it.
If you like to rinse it, use a sterile saline solution, or just use your saliva. Rinse it without scraping the surface. If it is an adult tooth, you can try to replace it temporarily in its socket in the mouth. Do not do this for a baby’s tooth.
Alternately, you can just put it in your mouth to keep it under the saliva. Else store it in saline or milk. Get as fast as you can to your dentist with the preserved tooth. If it is a baby’s tooth, take your child along, of course.
Now for the things that you can read more leisurely. If the tooth is still in good condition, your dentist can probably restore it to its original place. In this case, there is a good chance that the re-implanted natural tooth will fit itself back into place and return to full normal function in due course.
In case the preserved tooth cannot be put back in place for any reason, your dentist will be able to advise you on alternate ways to replace the missing tooth. Replacing a lost tooth is necessary not only for cosmetic but also for health reasons.
An adult tooth may fall out when it gets hit, though impact injuries are more common among children than in adults. Sometimes, it may fall out when it becomes cracked. For various reasons including infection, the tooth may suffer decay, in which case too, there is a possibility of its falling off on its own.
Grinding of teeth by habit or otherwise can stress the tooth, eventually making it to fall off.