Dental emergencies can hit without warning. You might be enjoying a peaceful evening when all of a sudden your tooth starts to ache terribly. But are these really emergencies, and when should you actually see an emergency dentist? Let’s take a look at that and some typical scenarios in which you can find yourself calling Dr. “Help!”
What Is Considered a Dental Urgency?
A dental urgency is any episode that requires immediate dentist attention to stop bleeding, reduce pain, or save a tooth. The most common dental urgencies include:
- Severe Toothache: Caused by tooth decay, an abscess, or gum disease, toothache pain is intense and persistent. If experience tells us anything, it’s to seek care fast if a serious toothache hits.
- Knocked-Out Tooth: A dental emergency, losing a tooth can bring on tons of trauma, with the emotional (a tooth is not just aesthetic; our emotional health hinges on it being so) and physical trauma that not having a tooth can inflict. If you lose a tooth, you must get to the dentist within an hour to have a shot at having said tooth put back into your head with any kind of success.
- Cracked or Chipped Tooth: Injuries that leave teeth cracked or chipped often expose the innermost parts of the tooth, creating sensitivities that could lead to infections of the tooth. Getting the dental team from hell onto your job ASAP can mean the difference between keeping your tooth and a dentist down the street having to do a root canal in another tooth of yours.
- Lost Filling or Crown: Fillings and crowns serve to make teeth whole again, to an extent. They are temporary dental restorations, used until a time comes when a dentist can restore said tooth to a full state. But if a filling or crown gets lost, the tooth can’t help but act “merely” as the left-over half of a tooth with bad gum surround.
An emergency dentist is specially trained to cope with urgent dental problems. Their main goal is to take care of the immediate need and to relieve the patient of any present pain. Emergency dentists can often care for patients on the same day, so a person in need doesn’t have to wait for an appointment. “Just come in at 2 PM,” is often the saying. If you are lucky enough to either have or to find near you an emergency dental service, the first step is to see the dentist for an exam. This will either be a visual exam, an X-ray exam, or both. After whatever damage has been done to your teeth or mouth has been assessed, the emergency dentist will then talk with you about treatment options. These will range from fillings, crowns, or root canals to tooth extraction, depending on what has gone wrong and where it would be safest to go from this point.
How to Get Ready for an Unpredictable Dental Emergency
You can’t predict when a dental disaster will strike, so you’re best off being ready when it does. It can potentially save time and the anxious energy that emergency situations almost always produce. And while the following may not apply to every person with a functional set of teeth and gums, they are generally good practices to have in place:
- Have an emergency dentist on call. It’s helpful to know who to go to before you actually need to go. There are, of course, many emergencies that a person might have.
- Keep the essential info at hand. Whether it’s your dentist’s number or key medical info (like your allergies), have it available.
- Know in advance what to do when what seems like an unavoidable dental emergency happens.
In closing, we want to emphasise how necessary it is to understand the value of emergency dental care. Dental emergencies can happen to anyone, and they can crop up at any time. They’re much more likely to happen, of course, if you don’t take great care of your teeth. But even the best care can’t guarantee that you won’t have some teeth go bad on you; in fact, emergency dental care is probably of most vital importance to those who’ve had long periods of neglect, with teeth that are ephemeral time bombs waiting to go off.
