Feb 01, 2021

Emergency Dental Care: Are All Dental Issues Emergencies?

It is incredibly essential for you to know what kind of dental issues require emergency dental service. It helps to take care of your family’s dental health while avoiding unnecessary visits to emergency rooms. Accidents tend to happen without warning, and some oral injuries may require prompt attention. However, can you assume every dental issue requires a visit to the 24-hour emergency dentist for attention right away?

When a dental emergency confronts you, you are often anxious and wondering what you must do to overcome the situation. You may think the dentist in Crestwood, IL, is unavailable at the unearthly hour. Your thinking may push you towards visiting an emergency room charging exorbitant fees to offer no treatments.

Emergency rooms are the last place you should visit when confronting a dental emergency. They neither have dental professionals nor the tools necessary to treat dental emergencies. You receive some pain-relieving medications with advice to see your dentist as soon as possible from the staff of the emergency room after waiting in queue for an extended period.

Which Dental Emergencies Need Prompt Attention?

A dental abscess resulting from an infected or inflamed tooth root undoubtedly needs prompt attention without any delay. The dental abscess appears like a pimple or bumps around your tooth root with pus or bleeding. The abscess has millions of bacteria that can spread to your body to cause the life-threatening condition sepsis.

If you notice a dental abscess in the evening or on holidays, you must contact a 24-hour emergency dentist without any exceptions. The dentist drains out the pimple, x-rays the tooth, and recommends root canal therapy as a remedy to remove the infected or inflamed pulp from within your tooth. The treatment may seem scary, but the condition in your mouth is potentially fatal. Therefore the better option would be to accept the dentist’s recommendations and undergo root canal therapy immediately.

A knocked-out tooth also needs prompt attention from an emergency dentist if you want to have it reinserted back into its socket. All dentists have emergency slots available in their hectic schedules and treat a patient with a knocked-out tooth soon as they enter the dental practice. The reinsertion of the tooth is possible if the patient reaches the dentist within 30 minutes of the accident or impact with the tooth maintained in a moist condition.

How to Deal with a Throbbing Toothache?

Throbbing toothaches don’t just appear out of the blue but result from untreated infections in your mouth. If the toothache is mild, you can consider using over-the-counter painkillers for relief. However, if it is persistent and doesn’t allow you to concentrate or sleep, you will do well to contact emergency dental services for help.

The toothache could result from trapped food particles between your teeth, which the dentist quickly removes with dental floss. The discomfort may also result from an undetected cavity observed by the dentist performing an x-ray. In such cases, dentists recommend tooth fillings as a remedy while providing you pain relief medications to alleviate the discomfort you experience.

Sometimes you may have a toothache resulting from a chipped or cracked tooth attracting bacteria to create an intensive cavity. Here again, the dentist may recommend cleaning the tooth and repairing the chips or cracks with restorative material like dental bonding and other procedures.

Is It Possible to Prevent Visits to Emergency Dental Care?

Yes, it is indeed possible to prevent visits to emergency dental care. However, to succeed in this goal, you must be proactive with your dental hygiene and attend regular exams and cleanings with your dentist. These methods help your dentist to detect any unknown issues with your teeth and mouth. Dental professionals create a personalized treatment plan specifically for you to ensure you don’t have to run around seeking emergency dental services when they are least expected.

You must also follow appropriate dental hygiene practices such as brushing your teeth twice daily for at least two minutes each, flossing your teeth at least once a day and preferably before brushing, avoiding sugary and starchy foods, prime culprits for most dental issues. Except for accidents when you need help from the Crestwood dentist, all other dental emergencies are preventable by adopting the aforementioned strategies.

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