Is Your Dental Problem an Emergency?
Many of the patients who end up seeking emergency dentistry do not necessarily have an urgent dental problem. The line between a typical dental issue and an oral emergency is so thin that sometimes it can be hard to determine conclusively whether you need to see an emergency dentist near you or not. While Greely dentists have not placed a clear-cut line on what should feature as an emergency in dentistry, there are several pointers to help you determine whether you are facing a dental emergency or not.
What Is Considered a Dental Emergency?
A dental emergency is any urgent and severe oral problem that significantly threatens your oral health in the present moment. Without immediate dental care in a dental clinic near you, your dental health will be at a high risk of irreversible damage. More to it is that an oral emergency disrupts the normal activities of your daily lifestyle, hence meriting urgent care. Some indicators of dental emergencies are:
- Severe, excruciating, and rather unbearable dental pain – can be tooth, jaw, throat, or gum pain. The most common type of pain is a toothache, but it is not the only one. Your jaw can also be in too much pain as a result of temporomandibular joint disorders.
- Prolonged bleeding – whether or not there is an open wound, if you can’t stop bleeding, see a dentist immediately.
- A missing tooth after a traumatic dental injury – see a dentist even if the tooth is still in your mouth but is partially dislodged.
- Significant swelling in your mouth and around your face – be especially keen to notice when the swelling starts spreading to other parts of your upper body, like your neck.
- Difficulty speaking and breathing – especially for oral-related allergic reactions, too much swelling, or extreme pain.
- Broken or damaged oral appliances – is an emergency because oral devices are meant to offer treatment. When they are damaged, therefore, it compromises your treatment plan and can deteriorate the success and results of your treatment thus far.