In the first 24 hours after the surgery the patient shouldn’t eat, spit, or rinse. After a day they can rinse their mouth with warm salt water every one or two hours. They shouldn’t bite down on the tooth until it heals. The doctor will prescribe antibiotics, as well as pain killers that should be taken as needed.
The patient should expect to be completely healed in about a month, as long as the tooth is able to reconnect with the tissue in the mouth and be saved. If so, the tooth should look perfectly normal once the healing process is complete.
Another common need for emergency dentistry is tooth extraction. Occasionally a tooth is abscessed and can’t be saved, or a tooth forms impacted and can’t emerge properly because there’s no room for it in the jaw. During extraction, the patient is sedated and the tooth is extracted. Then, a gauze sponge is packed into the space. Sometimes the gum over an impacted tooth has to be cut open and the gum sutured shut after the tooth is removed. The postoperative care is the same as for a tooth re-implantation and the patient should see complete recovery in about three weeks.