What Constitutes A Dental Emergency?
A knocked out tooth or bitten tongue can cause panic in any parent, but quick thinking and staying calm are the best ways to approach such common dental emergencies and prevent additional unnecessary damage and costly dental restoration. This includes taking measures such as application of cold compresses to reduce swelling, and of course, contacting our office as soon as possible.
Dental emergencies are potentially life threatening and require immediate treatment to stop ongoing tissue bleeding, alleviate severe pain or infection, and include:
- Uncontrolled bleeding.
- Swelling that is compromising your airway.
- Trauma involving facial bones.
Urgent dental care are not life threatening, but require immediate attention to relieve severe pain and/or risk of infection—and to alleviate the burden on hospital emergency departments. These should be treated as minimally invasively as possible.
- Severe dental pain from pulpal inflammation.
- Pericoronitis or third-molar pain.
- Surgical post-operative osteitis, dry socket dressing changes.
- Abscess, or localized bacterial infection resulting in localized pain and swelling.
- Tooth fracture resulting in pain or causing soft tissue trauma.
- Dental trauma with avulsion/luxation.
- Dental treatment required prior to critical medical procedures.
- Final crown/bridge cementation if the temporary restoration is lost, broken or causing gingival irritation.
- Biopsy of abnormal tissue.
Other urgent dental care situations include:
- Extensive dental cavities or defective restorations causing pain.
- Managing short-term restorative techniques when possible (i.e. silver diamine fluoride, glass ionomers).
- Suture removal.
- Denture adjustment on radiation/oncology patients.
- Denture adjustments or repairs when function impeded.
- Replacing temporary filling on endo access openings in patients experiencing pain.
- Snipping or adjustment of an orthodontic wire or appliances piercing or ulcerating the oral mucosa.
Dental Non-Emergency Procedures are either routine or non-urgent dental procedures, and are not limited to:
- Initial or periodic oral examinations and recall visits, including routine radiographs.
- Routine dental cleaning and preventive therapies.
- Orthodontic procedures other than those to address acute issues (e.g. pain, infection, trauma) or other issues critically necessary to prevent harm.
- Extraction of asymptomatic teeth.
- Restorative dentistry including treatment of asymptomatic carious lesions.
- Aesthetic dental procedures.
Last Updated: 3/30/21