First of all, when I see patients who have been involved with car accidents, immediately after the car accident, you’re not really thinking so much about your tooth. You’re thinking about your spine, your neck, your brain. After a serious car accident, the ambulance will rush the victim to the hospital to stabilise the patient, to make sure that there are no major injuries to the body, brain, or spine.
So by the time all these other body injuries are settled, then the tooth is kind of secondary importance. The tooth that has been damaged as a result of the accident, the dentist will come in and assess, to see whether the tooth can be saved. If the tooth can be saved, sometimes we have to do a root canal, sometimes we have to do a crown, the dentist would have to see.
But if the tooth can’t be saved, then the dentist would have to plan for the extraction. And the extraction could be done only after the patient has been discharged from the hospital to make sure that the patient is stable in terms of their overall condition.
If the patient has such a bad vehicular accident that he’s still in crutches and he’s having surgery to his head and neck, unfortunately, the protocol is that the teeth are of secondary importance.
By the time I come in to see the accident cases, usually, the patient is somewhat stable. Then I’ll decide from there. I’ll decide and see which teeth I can save, which teeth can’t be saved. And if they can’t be saved I’ll plan for the extractions. Sometimes you can extract the tooth and put in an implant at the same time, sometimes you must extract the tooth and wait for healing and make a denture before you can do an implant. There are many ways to go about it.
But generally when you’re in a road traffic accident and if it’s bad enough for you to call an ambulance, the medics and the A&E doctors would want to stabilise your condition first. Take all your scans to make sure there’s no brain injury, no spine injury, no injury to your internal organs -- all the critical organs to keep you alive. Make sure you survive, then the teeth usually comes a few days later.
