What Qualifies As a Dental Emergency?

When a dental emergency affects you or a family member, your first call should go out to your best dentist in Irvine. However, what if the problem occurs on a holiday, weekend, or beyond office hours? When dealing with a severe dental issue beyond regular office hours, you will likely need treatment from the emergency dentist near you to alleviate the pain you experience and preserve your tooth.

Dental emergencies strike in various forms, leaving you wondering whether you need help immediately from an emergency dentist or whether the problem can wait until you can meet your regular dental care provider. There are many variables to consider when you are affected by any dental problem. This article helps you determine dental emergencies to make you understand the difference between a standard dental problem that can wait until morning or a genuine emergency that threatens your health and can result in tooth loss. Would you please continue reading to learn more about how to recognize dental emergencies?

How to Determine If It’s a Dental Emergency?

The American Family Physician mentions approximately 22 percent of Americans have experienced oral dental pain in the last half-year. It confirms how common dental emergencies are. However, you don’t need to consider every dental problem as an emergency. To help you determine whether you can wait for treatment from your regular dentist or must make a trip to emergency dentistry near Oak Creek in Irvine, CA, we suggest you ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you experiencing severe pain? Severe pain accompanied by bleeding are signs of dental emergencies.
• Have you lost a tooth? Timely treatment from an emergency dentist helps to save your tooth.
• Do you have loose teeth? Adults mustn’t have loose teeth, and one even without pain is a severe problem.
• Do you have infections in the mouth? A dental abscess or severe infection is a life-threatening emergency needing prompt treatment from an emergency dentist. You may observe swelling, pimples on your gums, or swelling around the face.
• Are you bleeding from the mouth? Bleeding from the mouth is another sign of a potential dental emergency.

Generally, any issue needing immediate treatment to prevent bleeding, alleviate severe pain, or save your tooth is a dental emergency. The consideration also applies to severe life-threatening infections. If you have the indications explained above, you could encounter a dental emergency and must promptly call your dentist and explain what happened. If your dentist is not available or doesn’t offer emergency services, you can contact the dentist near you for advice.

Common Dental Emergencies You May Experience

Some of the most common dental emergencies you may experience are an unexplained toothache, exposed nerves, swollen or bleeding gums, swollen jaw or mouth, a knocked-out tooth, missing fillings, broken crown, abscessed tooth, any food trapped between teeth.

If you have swollen or bleeding gums, it indicates you are affected by periodontal disease and need treatment from a specialist before the condition worsens to cause tooth loss. A missing filling is not a minor problem because you have the filling in the tooth as a protection against infections. Getting the tooth restored as soon as possible helps prevent further damage needing expensive treatments from dentist 92604.

A knocked-out tooth due to an impact or an accident needs timely action on your part to ensure a dentist can reinsert the tooth into its socket. First, you must pick up the tooth carefully, holding it by the crown, and rinse it without scrubbing the roots. If achievable, try to put the tooth back into its socket. However, if you can’t place the tooth in a tiny milk container and get to the dentist within 30 minutes to increase the chances of saving your tooth.

If you have a dental abscess, a life-threatening condition, it indicates you have left tooth decay untreated for too long. A dental abscess causes fever, tooth sensitivity to temperatures besides tender lymph nodes in your neck, and swelling in the face. A dental spot is an emergency because the infection can spread to your jaw and other areas of your body. Getting timely treatment from an emergency dentist nearby helps you alleviate the problems you experience besides gaining control over the infection from antibiotics provided by the professional.

Is It Possible to Avoid Dental Emergencies?

Remaining proactive with your dental hygiene and having regular checkups with your dentist is the best way to prevent dental emergencies. During your visits, your dentist checks for problems like loose fillings and dental crowns besides signs of tooth decay and infections or gum disease.

The dentist creates a treatment plan explicitly for you to address the problems in your mouth before they develop into an emergency. You must also pay attention to indicators from your body and mouth, watching for signs indicating a dental emergency is on its way. You can undoubtedly adopt measures that can help prevent most dental emergencies except for accidents or impacts on your mouth that might leave you with a knocked-out tooth. Therefore keeping in possession information of an emergency dentist located nearby is also a requirement you cannot ignore.