As a general dentist, my appointments throughout the day can range from being a routine dental check up or removing a tooth or doing a filling to fix tooth decay. However, it is a common occurrence for patients to be booked in for an emergency dental appointment, and this could be with one of our regular patients or a new patient that needs to get in as soon as they can.
But what are some dental emergencies that can happen and are severe enough that you need to get into the dental chair urgently.
Unfortunately accidents happen and whether it’s on the sporting field, or in the living room at home, if you’ve had a knock to the face, making an appointment to see the dentist is important.
A trip to the emergency room would be the first place to be if an accident has caused a loss of consciousness, or severe and life-threatening injuries have occurred.
If you’ve had a knock to your teeth that has
- caused your tooth to chip (whether small or big),
- caused bleeding around your gums or cuts to the inside of your mouth,
- cause swelling in the face
- has made it painful for you to eat or drink,
- or your tooth to be completely knocked out of your mouth,
you should be making that emergency dental appointment as soon as you can.
It is important that when you call the dental clinic that you let them know the severity of your accident so you can triage appropriately. At our practice, if we receive an urgent call such as a young child having a tooth knocked out, we would ensure they get an appointment as soon as possible because delaying treatment can impact the success of our treatment.
The benefits of seeing a dentist after an emergency include receiving timely treatment and also allows us to give you the right advice to ensure we can save your teeth. It is also very important that those who have had an accident, that we monitor your teeth over time, because it is common for problems to not occur at the time of the accident, but instead occur years later.
Accidents can happen to anyone and I urge that however minor or major you think your emergency is, you should seek professional care to get the right advice. You should never take your teeth for granted, and only when we lose our teeth, do we realise how irreplaceable they truly are.
Dr Safinah