Dental Health POC

Emergency situations happen all the time. For medical emergencies there are urgent care and emergency room facilities, but what about urgent dental care? If you take a fall and chip a tooth, or if you bite down and discover a tremendous toothache, or even if you need an emergency root canal, calling the dentist’s office and scheduling an appointment for weeks later just doesn’t cut it. That’s why urgent dental facilities have been established to take care of urgent or emergency dental needs. Just like a medical emergency, sometimes we need dental urgent care as soon as possible.

Urgent dental care service covers a variety of problems. Toothache is one of the major problems that emergency dental care facilities see every day. Even if you go to the dentist regularly for your six month checkup, x-ray, and cleaning, a toothache can still develop suddenly in between visits requiring urgent care. A toothache can be the result of many problems, including cavities, infected dental pulp, gum disease, emerging wisdom teeth, cracked teeth, jaw disease, or exposed tooth rot. Some of these problems, such as infected dental pulp, may necessitate a root canal or tooth extraction. If extreme toothache develops, an emergency dental facility can take care of it.

If a patient ends up needing a root canal for any reason, most urgent care facilities can take care of that service right on the spot. Root canal is a treatment for the pulp of a tooth. The end result of a root canal is elimination of the infection in the dental pulp and protection of the tooth from future infection. In some cases the pulp may need to be removed and replaced with an inert material, usually a thermoplastic polymer, and then sealed with a crown to prevent against future infection.

Other common problems include lost crowns and fillings. As mentioned before, a crown is the device used to seal the tooth after a root canal and the filling is the material used to fill the cavity of the tooth. If either one of these is lost, it can damage the tooth and the previous work done by the dentist. For this reason, a lost crown or filling would be a dental emergency covered by most urgent dental care facilities.

Most facilities also can take care of wisdom teeth, extractions, broken or chipped teeth, implants, and other urgent dental situations. Because a dental emergency can happen at any time, most urgent dental care facilities are open twenty-four hours with no prior appointment necessary. Because dental emergencies happen when we least expect them, an urgent dental care facility can help when a regular dental office just isn’t fast enough.

A dental clinic can appear scary to many patients because of the tools and other instruments that surrounds the patients chair. Multiple electronic instruments supported by small hand tools are a common view that one can find inside the dentists office. Small tools with their shiny look, sharp edges and hook shape are used by the dentist to operate the denture. These tools are required to examine, explore, clean, restore and implant teeth and gums. One of the most common hand held instrument used for the teeth restoration is dental drill. Made up from materials like diamond, tungsten or carbide; this drills are commonly used to clean the remaining tooth portion from the gums, creating parallel or vertical channel inside the gums for teeth implants and shaping and sanding the teeth. Diamond burs are most used burs for dental implants and cleaning purposes compare to other materials.

In addition to identifying the cause of the dental issue and curing it, accuracy and precision are equally important. And it can be achieved with the help of the right instruments. Dental instruments can be classified based on their functions like tools for teeth inspection, clean-up and wiping, tooth removal tools and restoration tools. For more details they are explained below.

Denture Inspection Tools Multiple inspection instruments are required to properly check and evaluate the state of the teeth and gums. One of such instrument and widely used for any denture operation is hand held mirror. It is used throughout the dental procedure as it gives the detailed look of the difficult part such as behind the teeth and at the very back of the mouth and also provides reflection of light to perform dental treatment. Probes are used to check the tissue surrounding the gums and into the areas between the teeth. There are also some sickle tools available that used to check tooth decay into the depth.

Cleaning Tools These tools are useful to reduce or clean sticky plaque from the cavities and sticky yellow films from the teeth surface. Sickle probe is one of the commonly used tools for cleaning purpose but due to its sharp edges it is used with high care as it can scrape the tooth surface and bleed the gums. Instead of sickle probe, Curettes and Scalars are used to clean the tartar and plaque buildup on tooth surface. The shapes of these sharp instruments are into best match of the shape of teeth to get the best cleaning and it can reach to the most critical part like between, around and behind the teeth to get rid of even the smaller tarter or plaque accumulated there.

Tools For Tooth Removal The removal of the tooth is known as extraction and which is performed due to various reasons like cavities, plaque, tooth infections, opening of enamel and weaker gums. Different sizes and shapes of forceps are the commonly used tool for the tooth extractions. This long handled and strong grip tools are used to wiggle the tooth back and forth to loosen it from ligaments, then tear it down from the gums and pull it out. Elevator tools are used to remove the tooth from gum if a stronger tooth cannot be removed easily with the help of only forceps. This elevator acts as lever and inserted down through the gum tissue to wedge between the tooth and gum.

Restoration Tools Some dental conditions require tooth or teeth restoration, especially in the case of cavities. Restoration instruments for dentists include excavators, multiple sizes of chisels and burs. Out of these all, burs are the most important tool that is made up from diamond, carbide or tungsten. Diamond burs act as a drill head and works on different tooth conditions like removing remaining portion of teeth from the gum, shaping and sanding uneven tooth and creating parallel drill into gum for tooth fixing. They are also useful for removing stain yellow film from the teeth surface.

These all tools have their own significance for performing dental implants and removing residual like plaque and tarter. Some of them are cheaper and have longer life like forceps while some tools are quite costly and require good care while operating on denture like diamond burs. It is also necessary to use the right instrument with right size and also disinfected properly if it is re-used.