Emergency Dental Care

What Are the Different Emergency Dental Services?

Chipped or Broken Tooth Repair

Seemingly benign issues like a chipped or broken tooth can evolve into more severe problems that are both costly and taxing to handle. Breaking or chipping a tooth can often happen due to trauma, but these types of damage can also result from oral problems that build up progressively over time.

For example, unresolved tooth decay causes cavities and can lead to a chipped or broken tooth. Your tooth enamel is the outer layer of the tooth that is visible when you smile. While this enamel is hard and strong, the tooth’s internal structure can experience decay, making it easier to crack a tooth. A bite of food that is too hard or accidentally chomping down on a utensil can easily cause cracked teeth if decay persists.

Despite the cause of your chipped or broken tooth, you will likely need an emergency dental appointment to ensure no further issues arise. Common treatments for a broken tooth include dental bonding, a filling, a porcelain veneer, or a dental crown.

Toothache Treatment

While toothaches are sometimes just an annoyance and go away on their own, many toothaches can evolve into serious issues and require immediate, emergency dental care. If your toothaches persist for too long or cause extreme pain, you likely need emergency care. While most toothaches begin from irritation to the nerve in the root of the tooth, the exact reasons are difficult to identify without a dentist.

Knocked-Out Tooth Replacement

If you have a knocked-out tooth, you should treat it as a medical emergency. Usually, we can save a knocked-out tooth if we replace it within 30 minutes, but you have to act fast if you want to keep it.

Once you get to your dentist, the process will depend on if you have the tooth in place or stored in a fluid. If you have already reinserted the knocked-out tooth, we will X-ray your mouth to ensure it is in the correct position. Then, we will splint the tooth, joining it to the teeth around it and keeping it in place until the gums reattach to the tooth, which usually takes about two weeks. If you can’t reinsert the tooth, we will numb the area and insert the tooth for you. Then we X-ray your mouth and splint the tooth, as mentioned above.

For children, we usually don’t replace the baby tooth. Instead, we show you how to help your child manage the pain, reduce swelling, and clean the empty socket until the adult tooth beneath comes in.

No other steps are usually needed if the knocked-out tooth hasn’t broken. However, if a tooth has exposed pulp, we’ll need to perform a root canal. Many patients feel apprehensive about this procedure, but modern dentistry practices make root canals straightforward and painless.

If you can’t find the tooth, don’t worry. We have plenty of other options for that empty socket.

We can create a denture for you, a false tooth that you can easily remove for cleaning. We can also make a bridge, gluing a fake tooth to the adjacent teeth. Both of these are relatively painless and noninvasive. If you want something more permanent, we can install a dental implant, where we place a screw into the jawbone and mold a tooth over it to fit in the opening.

Endodontics & Root Canal Therapy

When a tooth becomes decayed or fractured, the bacteria can eat their way through the enamel and dentin layers until they reach the pulp tissue. Once here, they cause the pulp tissue to break down, causing destruction of the nerves and blood vessels within the pulp.

As the tissue breaks down, an infectious process starts within the pulp, and eventually the nerves and blood vessels die. Pressure from this infectious process builds up within the tooth, usually causing pain, and eventually an abscess develops at the root tip. Until this degraded tissue is removed from within the tooth, this painful infectious process continues.

Root canal treatment is performed on teeth where the nerve tissue within the roots has deteriorated, creating an infection. Within the roots are tiny canals where the nerve is located. When the nerve tissue degenerates, these tiny canals must be located, thoroughly cleaned, and then sealed with a filling material. A dental crown is often placed to further protect the affected tooth long-term.

Wisdom Teeth Infection

Wisdom teeth can become infected if they are partially erupted and food gets stuck under the gums causing an infection around the tooth. Another common cause is tooth decay. Since wisdom teeth are so far back, most people have a hard time brushing and keeping them clean, which leads to decay that eventually causes an infection. When there’s a problem with a wisdom tooth, you may start to notice symptoms like pain in the jaw or ear swelling, bad breath, difficulty opening the mouth, or fever.

To prevent the infection from getting worse and to protect your oral health, it is important to see an emergency dentist as soon as possible. They may address the infection through antibiotics or, if necessary, may remove the tooth to prevent further complications from developing. If you notice swelling in your face and have difficulty swallowing with fever, then you will have to go to urgent care or the emergency room to get IV antibiotics to control the spread of the infection to vital organs like the brain and heart.