Dental dental patient in the chair with the dentist holding drill and mouth mirror
Dr Chris Darby

Dr Chris Darby

Emergency Dental Care: Knowing When to Contact Your Emergency Dentist

At some point in our lives, all of us go need emergency dental care. Whether it’s a cracked or knocked out tooth, an alarming amount of blood after brushing your teeth or being woken at night with toothache, your dentist is your best friend.

Lifetime Holistic Dental offers a dedicated dental emergency program. We provide an in-hours and out-of-hours number, and we leave slots open for emergencies. With more than 30-years in the industry, there’s no problem we haven’t faced or fixed. We know how to stop pain in its tracks and put measures in place to save your teeth and prevent any further damage.

Common Types of Dental Emergencies

Melburnians love for weekend sport means that sports injuries make up a massive chunk of our emergency dental appointments. Trauma incurred during the rough and tumble of a game of footy, as well as basketball, netball and hockey, mean that teeth are chipped, broken or completely lost. In this case, you need to visit the dentist as soon as possible. The quicker you get in, the better the chance of saving your tooth.

Of course, we prefer to prevent the problem in the first place by making you a custom fitted mouthguard and you wearing a dentist-fitted mouthguard that could save you from requiring an emergency visit at all!

Common Dental Emergencies

Other common problems requiring emergency dental care are:

  • Wisdom Teeth: As the teeth push through the gum there will be pain often requiring pain killers. However, there may be insufficient room for the new tooth and it may be impacted which means the pain will not go away.
  • Pain or a swollen face due to Infection and Abscesses: Poor oral hygiene and trauma can allow plaque and bacteria to take hold and generate pressure and pain around the poorly cleaned tooth or gum causing the area to become infected. The pain can often be intense, even waking you from deep sleep. Infected roots due to deep decay allowing bacteria to invade the nerve of the tooth will cause severe pain and require you to visit to emergency dentist and most likely requiring emergency root canal therapy.
  • Toothache: This could be caused by many factors, and its best to see a dentist so we can address the cause rather than just treating the symptoms with pain killers. Pain killers will allow you to survive the night till we can see you the next day, in our daily emergency dental appointment.

With all of these conditions, some patients will tend to put up with mild discomfort for many weeks and only call us when the pain becomes unbearable. We caution against this, as when the pain has genuinely flared up, it is harder to treat and may require more invasive and more expensive forms of treatment.

So, as soon as you notice any sensitivity, pain or discomfort, it’s time to pay us a visit. That bit of swelling could be the start of a severe infection or even gum disease. A sore tooth could be chipped, a sensitive tooth may be missing a filling, or the decay may have reached the nerve.

You never want to try and wait out a “bit of pain”. Time is always of the essence, and minor issues can quickly snowball. You’re not going to save yourself any time or effort, and in many cases, it will end up costing you a lot more of both. In fact, an infection can quickly spread to your facial muscles and become life-threatening by compromising your ability to breathe and swallow. A quick visit to the dentist means this will never be a reality that you have to deal with. It is best to be the person without the dental horror story for the dinner table.

Why Lifetime Holistic Dental Loves Emergency Dentistry

When patients visit us for emergency dental care, they are often in extreme pain and hate going to the dentist. As health professionals, it’s always distressing to see this, and it’s gratifying to have the tools to relax a nervous patient and relive this pain, save teeth and help patients take those first steps back towards optimal health.

But, it’s always our preference and most of our patients’ preference to prevent things and to never let dental problems get that severe.

If you follow a proper health routine, you can avoid emergency dentistry.

What is a Healthy Dental Routine?

A healthy routine includes:

  • Brushing at least twice a day, using a proper technique. A proper technique means holding the brush at a 45-degree angle towards the gum and brushing in a circular motion so the tooth brush bristles going up to and under the gum line.
  • Flossing daily to remove particles and debris from in between the teeth.
  • Eating a healthy diet full of whole foods and low in processed, sugary or acidic foods.
  • Following a healthy lifestyle, which means no smoking, moderate alcohol intake and plenty of movement and sleep.
  • Taking steps to avoid trauma to your teeth. That means wearing a custom dentist fitted mouthguard when playing contact or collision sports. It also means avoiding bad habits like chewing on hard objects like ice and treating your teeth and gums like the important, delicate body parts they are.
  • Visiting the dentist twice a year for a general check-up and a scale and clean. This is essential in removing plaque and bacteria, so you don’t suffer tooth decay and gum disease. It also helps with monitoring the growth and development of your teeth and jaw and checking for any potential risks pertaining to your lifestyle choices.

At Lifetime Holistic Dental, an appointment is never a waste of time. So, if you’re concerned about anything, give us a call, and we’ll get you in for an appointment.

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