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Anyone who has experienced a dental emergency will know it can be concerning, possibly painful, and even a little scary, so it’s good to know that you have an emergency dentist you can trust and who is here to help you and your family. Century Dental makes every effort to quickly see patients in pain or discomfort, preferably on the same day.
It is important to know when a situation is a dental emergency and what to do next. Certain dental emergencies require immediate care, while others are less urgent.
It’s important to ensure you have an emergency dentist so you can call a dental professional immediately. When our patients contact us, our friendly and knowledgeable dental team can offer immediate advice and reassurance over the phone on how to deal with the emergency until you can come and see us. We can also ensure we get you booked in quickly to see our emergency dentist. When you come and see us, we can soon diagnose the problem and provide urgent dental care, including emergency toothache relief that will soon have you feeling back to normal.
A dental emergency is a situation that requires immediate care. You need emergency dental care if you knock out a tooth, damage your jaws, cheeks, lips, or tongue, or experience uncontrolled bleeding. The same applies if you suspect you have broken facial bones or are in extreme pain. Other examples include the following dental emergencies.
Below is some information on managing a specific dental emergency until you can come and see us.
Rinse your mouth with warm water and gently floss around the affected tooth. Sometimes impacted food between teeth can be enough to dislodge a tooth, causing toothache. Use a cold compress to relieve any swelling and take over-the-counter pain relief to cope with the discomfort. You should never place painkillers or aspirin on the gum or tooth because it can burn your gums. Make sure you come and see us as soon as possible.
A dental abscess is a serious infection that can damage teeth and surrounding tissue and may also affect your general health. One sign of a dental abscess is noticing a pimple on the gum where pus has built up. You can try to draw the pus to the surface by rinsing your mouth with a solution of warm salt water several times a day until you can see us.
Ensure you retrieve the tooth, holding it carefully by the crown, which is the part you can normally see, and rinse any visible dirt of the tooth root with water but don’t remove any tissue fragments. Ideally, try and place the tooth back in the socket, making sure it faces the right way around, but otherwise, store the tooth in a little milk or plain water with a pinch of table salt or saliva. It’s important to visit Century Dental or an emergency dentist immediately because there is a far better chance of saving a knocked-out tooth when we can reinsert it within an hour after the accident.
Relieve any pain with over-the-counter painkillers, and you can use a cold compress to help relieve swelling. Please come and see us as soon as possible so we can try to reposition the tooth and stabilize it until it re-attaches in the socket.
Rinse your mouth with warm water and save any broken pieces of your tooth if possible. If your mouth is bleeding, apply a piece of clean gauze and use gentle pressure to help stop the bleeding. It should stop within twenty minutes at most. If the bleeding doesn’t stop, visit the neared emergency room. Otherwise, please schedule an appointment to come and see us as soon as possible.
If you lose a filling or break a dental restoration, try using a small piece of sugar-free gum to help protect the tooth. A broken crown, bridge, or other restoration might be repairable but could need replacing. If the dental restoration has become loose, save it and bring it to your appointment. It may be possible to clean the restoration and recement it in place. Please don’t try to glue it back yourself, as you could damage the restoration and your tooth irreparably.
Toothache is an emergency if it is causing pain and discomfort that is debilitating. Usually, a toothache is due to an infection, often because a tooth is severely decayed. Treating the infection will quickly help you feel more comfortable and prevent the infection from worsening. Patients with toothache often have experienced signs beforehand, like tooth sensitivity or discomfort when biting, brushing, or flossing their teeth. If you notice the symptoms, we encourage you to contact us quickly so we can assess and treat the tooth before it develops into an emergency toothache.
If you suspect a dental abscess, it is an emergency requiring urgent dental care. However, how quickly you need to see us depends on your symptoms. A severe dental abscess can cause facial swelling, fever, and a sense of feeling very unwell. If you notice these symptoms, it’s important to seek emergency dental care immediately as, in rare cases, it can become life-threatening, so please don’t delay. If you can’t get to see us immediately, go to your nearest emergency room.
Treatment for dental emergencies focuses on diagnosing the problem and providing immediate dental care to relieve pain and discomfort. Usually, you will need to visit Century Dental at least twice to complete your treatment plan. We will gently examine your mouth and will almost certainly need to take digital dental x-rays. Once we have an accurate diagnosis, we can provide a treatment plan that we will discuss in detail.
The treatments recommended might be as simple as bonding a cracked or chipped tooth or placing a filling in a cavity. If you have a more severe toothache, we may need to perform root canal therapy, where we remove the infected pulp tissue from the tooth’s center before sealing the tooth and restoring it with a dental crown. If you have a dental abscess, we will try our best to save the tooth, but this is not always possible. We might have to remove the tooth to allow the infection to drain, and we may also prescribe antibiotics.
When a tooth is partly or completely knocked out, we will make every effort to preserve it. A partially dislodged tooth can be repositioned and splinted to an adjacent tooth to help hold it in place until it is healed. It is a similar process to reinserting a tooth. Although reinsertion is more likely to be successful within an hour after the accident, it is still worth attempting later, so please come and see us as soon as you can. We can discuss suitable replacements if we cannot save a partly dislodged or knocked-out tooth.
Emergency dental care costs depend on the treatment required, as a small filling or dental bonding is relatively inexpensive and quick to complete. Other treatments may be lengthier and more costly, such as root canal therapy requiring several appointments to restore the tooth fully. It can also depend on whether you need out-of-hours emergency dental care or whether you can be treated during office hours.
Some dental emergencies are unavoidable, such as knocking out a tooth, but the risk of others, like severe toothache or dental abscesses, can be minimized with good preventive dentistry. This is why we strongly suggest that our patients see us every six months for regular checkups and dental cleanings and maintain good oral hygiene between these visits. Regular, ongoing dental care can greatly reduce the risk of dental emergencies, but when they happen, Century Dental is here to assist you, providing prompt, compassionate dental care to help relieve any pain and discomfort quickly.
Century Medical and Dental Center is an accredited healthcare facility in NY that operates in accordance with Article 28, a public health law. This law regulates and recognizes accreditation for public healthcare facilities, ensuring they are licensed and operated correctly. By undergoing the Article 28 process and achieving accreditation, Century Medical and Dental Center demonstrates its commitment to meeting the highest standards of care.
As a multidisciplinary medical center, we have highly qualified doctors, nurses, and support staff who are working hard to provide the best medical care to patients in Midtown Manhattan, NY, Downtown Brooklyn, NY, including Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo, Prospect Heights, Park Slope, Clinton Hill, Boerum Hill, Red Hook, and Bedford-Stuyvesant.