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.