You lick your lips as you bite down into your favorite chewy candy. Instead of being met with pleasant sweetness, you feel a sharp pain shoot through your mouth. When you pull the treat out, there’s a piece of your tooth stuck in it.
Guess it’s time to make a dentist appointment, right? Wrong. For something as serious as breaks and cracks, it’s a good idea to go in for emergency dental repairs.
You need to get the situation under control. If you don’t, you may experience further pain or worse. A broken tooth is only one reason to visit an emergency dentist in Houston.
Check out this guide for an entire list of reasons to skip the appointment-making process.
1. You Have a Horrible Toothache
Having a small toothache now and again is no cause for alarm. Persistent debilitating pain is another story. You need to go in for a dentist visit as soon as possible to find out what the problem is.
You might have a lost crown or crown fell off. Maybe you cracked your tooth. Both instances will expose the sensitive nerve in your tooth and cause horrible suffering that over-the-counter medication can’t fix.
2. You’ve Lost a Tooth
You’re hurrying across a playing field when all of a sudden, someone slams right into your jaw. Everything seems fine until you spit your tooth out in your palm.
Don’t worry, there’s still hope for the tooth. If you go in for an emergency dental visit within the hour, they might be able to reattach it to the socket.
3. You Have a Dental Abscess
If you have a cavity that remains untreated, there may come a time when it extends right into the pulp of your tooth. The pulp becomes infected and forms a dental abscess.
An abscess usually comes hand-in-hand with a fever, swollen glands, horrible pain, and pus. The only way to treat the problem is with draining or surgery.
4. You’ve Got a Chipped or Broken Tooth
A chipped tooth usually occurs when a person bites down on something hard. Luckily, an experienced dentist can handle the problem in a single visit.
Breaks happen when a chip isn’t dealt with. Fixing a broken tooth is a lot trickier. They hurt more and take a little bit of effort to fix.
You may have to get a dental crown to prevent the tooth from suffering further damage.
5. Your Gums Are Sore and Bleeding
Do your gums bleed when you brush them? This is a sign of early gingivitis. It’s not exactly a dental emergency, unless you don’t take measures to reverse it.
It may advance to full-on gum disease, which is a lot more dangerous. It leads to tooth loss and other medical emergencies.
If your case of gum disease has gotten this far, you’ll experience bleeding gums all the time, not only during teeth brushing. Your gums will also become sore and swollen.
6. You Lost a Filling
Losing a filling is a pretty common occurrence. All it takes is biting down on something hard or chewy. When it happens, you need to try to get to a dentist ASAP.
The longer you wait, the more damage your tooth may endure. In the meantime, go to the store and get a bottle of clove oil. Applying it to the sensitive area will help you deal with the pain.
If you still have the filling with you, try to put it back on with dental cement from the store. This isn’t a permanent solution, but it will do until you get into the dentist’s office.
You can even use dental cement to cover the area if you don’t have the filling. As long as you have something there to stop bacteria from getting in, that’s all that matters.
7. Your Jaw Is Swollen
Most of the time, a swollen jaw indicates that you have a salivary gland infection. This means there’s some kind of blocker there that’s stoping your saliva from doing its job.
Since there’s nothing that’s washing the bacteria away, it’s become a real problem. Other symptoms of infection include a fever, a bad taste in your mouth, and trouble breathing.
You can prevent this issue by drinking at least 8 glasses of water every day. As far as what to do once you have an infection, you can gurgle salt water if you can’t make it to the emergency dentist right away.
Massaging the area and sucking on sugar-free lemon candies might give you some relief as well.
In rare instances, you might have to get surgery to fix this problem. Most dentists won’t bother with that until it’s become a repetitive issue though.
8. You Continue to Bleed After Oral Surgery
If you’ve had oral surgery, it’s natural for the area to bleed a little. Most of the time, it slows down a day or two after the operation is complete.
If you continue to bleed for two or more days, that’s an issue. Get to an emergency dentist right away. They’ll have to inspect the wound to make sure that it’s healing the way it should.
Do You Need Emergency Dental Repairs?
If you have a normal toothache, making an appointment to go to the dentist is reasonable. If you’re experiencing any of the issues on this list, however, you can’t afford to wait.
Go to the nearest dentist and have emergency dental repairs done right away. It may just save your tooth.
Many of the problems discussed in this article can be handled with the right oral health steps. Feel free to check out the health section of our blog to learn more about keeping your pearly whites looking beautiful.
