What Should You Do in a Dental Emergency?

One thing that causes real panic is experiencing an emergency and not knowing what to do. This happens a lot with dental emergencies because they seem to happen less frequently than other common injuries. Instead of having a special hospital for dental emergencies, we want you to call our office. Each injury is so different and we usually need to see them to come up with a treatment plan.

How to Know if you have an Emergency

Not all dental problems are emergencies. Injuries that classify as emergency dental situations include:

  • Intense pain
  • Swollen face or jaw
  • Tooth knocked out
  • Fractured or broken teeth
  • Loosened or repositioned teeth

If you experience any of these injuries, it is very important that you give us a call as soon as possible. If your injury does not fall into one of these categories, but you are really worried about it, give us a call anyway.

Fixing the Problem

If you have a dental emergency, the first thing you should do is call us and come in. We leave emergency slots open through the day and try to accommodate outside of our office hours as well.

Extreme pain or swelling. First, we take x-rays to check for an abscess tooth. These usually require a root canal or extraction once the swelling subsides. To treat dental pain, especially where swelling is involved, take ibuprofen to help reduce the pain and swelling. There is no need for you to be suffering unnecessarily.

Knocked out tooth. Try to put it back into your gums, while being careful not to touch the roots as much as possible and then call us. If you are uncomfortable doing that or it doesn’t work, keep the tooth moist in a cup of milk until you can get to us.

Fractured teeth. These are more difficult to treat because each break is different. Make sure you rinse out your mouth with warm water to remove lingering fragments. After looking your mouth over, we will come up with a treatment plan to manage the pain and then restore your mouth with bridges, crowns, implants, veneers, or whatever we need to do to fix it.

Loosed or Repositioned teeth. Loose tooth will often secure themselves within a few days. If they are too loose, we might want to make sure there is nothing preventing them from going in further. We can help push them in. With teeth needing repositioning, use your thumb to push them back into place if they aren’t moved drastically. No matter what, we want you to come in so we can make sure there is no permanent damage to the gum tissue, surrounding teeth, or to the tooth itself.

Better Safe than Sorry

No one likes being the person who panics unnecessarily and looks silly, but that’s what we are here for. Instincts are often accurate and it’s better to get it checked out than to suffer needlessly or to let a problem escalate when it didn’t need to. Give us a call for any situation you deem an emergency and we can ease your mind.

CALL US TODAY

Our Location

2820 Lurleen B Wallace Blvd, Northport, AL 35476

Hours of Operation

Our Regular Schedule

Primary Location

Monday:

7:00 am-5:00 pm

Tuesday:

7:00 am-5:00 pm

Wednesday:

7:00 am-5:00 pm

Thursday:

7:00 am-5:00 pm

Friday:

Closed

Saturday:

Closed

Sunday:

Closed