Your Comprehensive Guide to Handling a Dental Emergency

While you may keep up with your regular cleanings and dental work, emergencies can and do happen. How you handle them can affect the outcome. Whether as a result of an accident, sports injury, infection or fall, dental emergencies can result in knocked-out teeth, abscesses, chipped teeth and more. The key is to act quickly and contact your general dentist in Studio City.

Check out these common emergencies and what to do if they happen to you.

• Chipped or broken tooth: If possible, save the chipped piece of the affected tooth and seal it in a baggie to bring to your dentist. Rinse your mouth with warm water. If you are bleeding, press gauze to the area, followed by a cold compress to keep the swelling down.
• Lost fillings: Have you lost a ceramic or silver filling? Chew up a piece of sugarless gum and adhere it to the top of the tooth or get some over-the-counter dental cement. Call your dentist as soon as you can to get an appointment. When you leave the tooth exposed, infection could set in.
• Knocked-out tooth: If the tooth is easily recoverable, grab it by the crown rather than the root. Rinse it off and try to settle it gently back into its slot in your gums. Hold it there until you can get to an ER, walk-in clinic, or your dentist’s office. If you can’t get to help quickly, drop the tooth in a cup of milk to preserve the root.
• Toothache: To deal with the pain, take an over-the-counter pain reliever or apply a cold compress. If you think the tooth ache is caused by a piece of food, try to dislodge it with floss. If not, this could signal a deeper problem that requires immediate attention.
• Abscess: An abscess, an infection at the root of the tooth, is a condition that needs immediate attention in order to prevent the infection from getting out of control. Rinse regularly with warm, salty water and make an appointment to see your dentist.
• Broken brackets: If you have braces and a bracket, wire, or brace breaks, use the tip of a pencil eraser and gently push it back into place. If you have wax, you can use that to cover up jagged or pointy wires that poke at the insides of your mouth. Call your dentist or orthodontist to get the problem fixed right away. Prolonged treatment at great expense and discomfort can result if you waste time before calling your dentist or orthodontist.

5 Tips to Keep Your Teeth Safe This Spring

With the warm weather upon us, it’s natural to want to get outside, enjoy nature, swim, camp and engage in other outdoor activities. However, keeping your teeth safe this summer may be a challenge, especially if you just got teeth whitening treatments or your braces were recently removed. How can you protect them to maintain your brilliant smile? We will tell you how.

1. Use your mouth guard: If you were fitted for a mouth guard as part of your orthodontic treatment, it’s important to use it as directed. Summer poses many more opportunities to hurt your teeth than winter. You’re outside more, you’re playing sports you usually may not play, and you may be taking more risks. Using a customized mouth guard will minimize the risk of sustaining dental injuries that can set back your treatment or cause extensive damage. This is particularly important if you participate in a school or town-wide team sport.
2. Keep up with your oral hygiene routine: It can be tempting to neglect your teeth in the summer. After all, you’re spending a lot of time away from home, you’re eating foods you don’t normally eat such as candy and ice cream, and you may be staying up a lot later at night. It’s important to keep up with your brushing and flossing routine throughout the summer, especially if you have braces. Brush after every meal and floss once at night before bed. Don’t forget to wear your retainer, too.
3. Hit the dentist before traveling: Prior to heading out on a vacation this summer, try to schedule your regular dental or orthodontic checkup. This will ensure a clean mouth as well as address any issues you may face that could pose a problem while away. It costs far more to visit an emergency dentist while on your trip than it does to just get the OK from your regular dentist.
4. Nix the sports drinks: Because sports drinks contain a lot of sugar – sometimes as much as a soda – cutting them out will help you protect your teeth against the formation of cavities. It’s best to just drink water when you’re dehydrated. Sports drinks are also high in acid, which damages your tooth enamel, not to mention, they can cause staining to those pearly whites you worked so hard to get.
5. Put together an emergency dental care kit: Stock it with anything you will need for an overnight stay, such as toothbrush and toothpaste, floss, mouthwash, wax, ibuprofen and gauze, as well as the contact information for your dentist should you need to ask questions.

What to Know When Choosing an Emergency Dentist

You never know when you’ll experience a dental emergency. But when you do, it’s important to have a trusted dentist lined up so you won’t be scrambling to find emergency care. Many general dentists also offer emergency dental services and have a 24/7 line you can call to get care when you need it. Other dentists do not have the resources to offer emergency dentistry, and in those cases, you may have to visit an urgent dental care walk-in clinic.

How can you choose the best emergency dentist for you? Here are some considerations.

Availability

You existing dentist may have a 24/7 line you can call to get in touch with an on-call dentist and meet them in the office for treatment no matter what time it is. Find out from the dentist what their policy is on emergencies and what constitutes such a visit.

If you choose to go to an urgent care medical facility, you don’t need an appointment, but you may have longer a wait time.

Quality of Care

An emergency dentist will give you an exam and determine the root of the problem. Sometimes, you need an extraction or other emergency procedure, which can be done at the time of that emergency visit. Other times, you have to go back to the dentist at a later date for follow-up care and procedures in the case of more extensive work. A good dentist will check your medical history before working on you to see if there are any medical issues that tie in to your specific situation. This is to prevent complications.

Cost

Emergency dental work typically costs more than general dentistry services performed during regular business hours. However, dental insurance plans may cover some or all of the emergency dental work. Call and check with your insurance plan provider.

For those procedures that you must pay for out of pocket, many dentists offer affordable financing.

Follow-Up Care

Once your visit with an emergency dentist is over, you may be advised to come back at a later date for a follow-up visit. This is so your dentist can keep an eye on the healing process to ensure there are no complications.

Contact Studio City Dental Center

If you or a loved one has a severe dental emergency or trauma, call 911. Otherwise, contact us at 818-762-2977, or email us at info@studiocitydentalcenter.com.