Free tool · Scarlet Beast En español →

When a tooth is knocked out or broken

For anyone holding a tooth in their hand right now, and for anyone with a chipped, cracked or loosened tooth after a fall, a game or a blow. What to do in the first minutes. What to carry the tooth in, and what never to. Why a baby tooth is handled differently. A bitten lip or tongue, and bleeding. Where to go when the dentist is closed, and where to look when money is short. Mouthguards. Where the sources differ. And the words to say when you call. No quiz and no score. One thing at a time.

This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). The facts come from pages read on October 3, 2026: the American Dental Association (Dental Emergencies and Mouthguards, on its MouthHealthy site); the American College of Emergency Physicians (Dental Emergencies, from its Know When to Go pages); Nemours KidsHealth (What to Do About Teeth Injuries); the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (its Frequently Asked Questions for parents); the American Academy of Pediatrics (the Tooth Injury page of the symptom checker on HealthyChildren.org, which credits a pediatric guidelines company for its content); the International Association of Dental Traumatology (Prevention and Emergency Care); the National Health Service in England (Knocked-out tooth; Chipped, broken or cracked tooth); the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (Finding Dental Care); Medicaid.gov (Dental Care); Medicare.gov (Dental services); and MedlinePlus, from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (the summary of Tooth Disorders). Each is linked where it is used. The two National Health Service pages contain public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0; the National Health Service and the Dental Traumatology association are not U.S. bodies, and we use their first aid steps only. One source we chose not to use: the American Association of Endodontists, the dentists who specialize in saving teeth, has pages on knocked-out and cracked teeth, but its site reserves its rights for text and data mining, AI training and similar technologies. We respected that: nothing here is taken from its pages, and we link to one so you can read it yourself. Some pages could not be read: the American Red Cross and Mayo Clinic sites refused our request in earlier work, the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry’s emergency care pages would not load, and several addresses we tried at KidsHealth and HealthyChildren.org were not found, so none of them is used. We did not read any first aid course material, or any page on braces, dentures, crowns or implants after an injury, tetanus shots, a dental abscess, or what an emergency room can do for a tooth; where the page touches one of these, it says so. We did not call any number or test any search. Where two sources say different things, the page reports each: whether to put a knocked-out tooth back yourself, what to rinse it with, how long a tooth can be out, whether a dentist might put a baby tooth back, how urgent a broken tooth is, and how long to press on bleeding before going to an emergency room. The page has no questionnaire and gives no score, on purpose. It names no person, no product and no medicine to take, and it gives no figures for how many teeth are injured and no prices. The times on the page are the sources’ own. Lines marked “Ours” are our own suggestions. This page saves nothing: no account, no cookies, nothing you tick is stored or sent, and no analytics (privacy). Scarlet Beast is not a clinic, a dental office or an emergency service, and takes no money from anyone named here. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].