Emergency Dental Care in Rockefeller Plaza

A dental emergency is any problem with your teeth, gums, or mouth that is either life-threatening or could become so if it isn’t treated with the proper urgency. Severe dental pain is also considered an emergency, as it can interfere with the activities of your normal daily life and may suggest a deeper underlying dental or medical problem at effect.

Swelling and Pain

Two of the earliest signs of many dental problems that either constitute immediate emergencies or emergencies in the making are swelling and pain. While these don’t always accompany every dental emergency or don’t always arise in the initial stages of a nonetheless urgent dental concern, if they do occur, you can be relatively sure that indicates a problem requiring emergency dental care. And, if they’re not treated with due haste, you can be relatively sure they’ll keep progressing and spreading into a more severe and pervasive problem.

Just some of the dental issues that can lead to mouth pain and swelling include a cavity, tooth decay and a sinus infection.

Toothache

For example, a toothache is a dental emergency, since it causes extreme and potentially debilitating pain and could either lead to a greater problem or may indicate a greater problem already taking place. That’s why you should call your emergency dentist in Rockefeller Plaza the moment you discover tooth pain.

Broken Tooth

A broken tooth is another type of dental emergency. There are many different ways you can break a tooth: playing sports or roughhousing, grinding your teeth, biting into something hard, or having a fall or other accident. Whatever the cause, a broken, chipped, or cracked tooth can leave a sharp edge in your mouth that can cut your lips, gums, cheeks, or tongue, causing potentially uncontrollable bleeding. This type of dental emergency is more common in kids, though adults can have teeth break on them as well.

Knocked-out Tooth

Similarly, having a tooth knocked-out or fall out on its own qualifies as a dental emergency, as the open site it leaves behind can be vulnerable to bacteria settling and building up and, eventually, to plaque and tartar forming. Failing to treat the area soon enough can lead to a gum infection that can then spread throughout your mouth. When you see your emergency dentist for a knocked-out or fallen-out tooth, the dentist can repair any damage left behind and possibly replace the missing tooth. If you manage to find the missing tooth and you receive dental care soon enough, your dentist may even be able to replant the lost tooth back in your mouth.

Crown and Filling Issues

Crowns and fillings protect damaged teeth from becoming more damaged or causing harm to other parts of your dental or general health. Therefore, when these become broken or fall out, it re-exposes the damaged teeth and poses the same risks as never having the filling or crown placed to begin with.

That’s why you need to get a broken crown fixed or a missing crown or filling replaced as soon as possible. While it may take some time for your dentist to arrange a permanent solution to this problem, your dentist can at least provide a temporary solution in the meantime. For instance, if there’s pain involved in the crown or filling issue, if it impedes on your ability to eat or perform other normal activities of daily life or becomes infected, an emergency dentist can relieve those symptoms straight away.

And, despite how it may seem, you cannot fix a broken or missing filling or crown yourself–even if you find the missing piece; only your dentist can do that.

Dry Sockets

Whenever you have a tooth removed, the removal site needs to heal. To protect the site while it does this, the body creates a blood clot over it. If this blood clot doesn’t form, however, or it gets dislodged, it leaves an empty pocket behind that can attract bacteria, plaque, and tartar. More immediately, however, the space the pocket exposes can dry out considerably, creating what’s known as a dry socket.

Dry sockets can be extremely painful and impair the body’s ability to heal the extraction site. That can lead to potentially debilitating irritation, inflammation, and pain.

What Happens at an Emergency Dental Appointment?

When you go to see your dentist for an emergency, the first thing your dentist will do is relieve any immediate pain you’re suffering. Then, the dentist will examine your mouth, identify the problem, and assess the damage. From there, you and your dentist can discuss the most appropriate treatment plan to fix the problem.

Even before you see your dentist for emergency care, your dentist may give you suggestions of how to care for your mouth in the meantime to reduce your pain and prevent the problem from worsening.

What Happens if You Leave a Dental Emergency Untreated?

If you fail to get treatment for a dental emergency within an appropriate time frame, the problem can develop into a full-fledged medical emergency. When an infection or inflammation spreads from the mouth to other parts of the body, depending on where it spreads, it can cause or contribute to diabetes, stroke, heart disease and certain kinds of arthritis or even cancer. And, if it spreads to the brain, it can even impair your memory and thinking ability.

For this reason, if you can’t receive emergency dental care for a potentially life-endangering dental problem, you may want to go to the emergency room at the nearest hospital. While the doctors there are not dentists, they can at least handle the immediate problem so you have more time to get to the dentist without putting your life or future health at risk.

If you experience mouth pain or another dental emergency in Rockefeller Plaza, don’t delay in calling us at Richard L. Rausch, DDS to schedule an appointment today.