What You Should Know About Getting Emergency Dental Care in Claremont

If you’re away from home when you experience a dental emergency, your first thought might be a concern that you won’t be able to locate a dentist near you to provide top-rated emergency dental care in Claremont. But as one of the area’s top-rated comprehensive dentists, we offer the same exemplary care for a dental emergency as we do every day for general, preventive, and cosmetic dental care.

And, if you’re a resident of Claremont and experience a dental emergency but have not yet located a dentist near you, Dr. Simmons is here to provide the urgent care that’s needed to help patients of all ages recover from their dental emergency.

What to Consider During a Dental Emergency

Everyone will view a change in their dental health differently. One person may think that their bleeding gums when brushing and flossing are signals for urgent care. At the same time, another will know that bleeding gums during brushing and flossing are more a signal that it’s time for a preventive care appointment rather than emergency dentistry.

That being said, our dentist and dental care team are here to provide triage advice over the phone, so you’ll know whether your experience is one that requires immediate attention. If it is, we’ll make arrangements for you to come into our office; or if it can wait, we’ll provide you with our next available appointment. The takeaway here is to call us if you experience any change in your dental health.

Some of the most common dental emergencies that will require an immediate visit include:

• A permanent tooth that has been knocked out
• A permanent tooth that is cracked or broken to the point that the interior is exposed
• Excessive pain in the oral cavity that cannot be controlled with over-the-counter relief or ice therapy
• Bleeding from the gums that do not stop or can’t be controlled
• A suspected infection such as an abscess

While a tooth that’s been knocked out is considered an emergency, a cracked tooth or a broken tooth that does not expose the interior can usually wait until your dentist’s next available appointment. The same is true if you’ve lost a dental veneer, filling, or crown.

What Should You Do in a Dental Emergency?

As mentioned, the first thing you should do during a dental emergency is to call our dentist to receive triage information. Many dental emergencies, such as a broken tooth, have time limits or a short window in which the problem can be treated before it worsens or becomes permanent. If your tooth has been knocked out, make sure you try to locate it so you can bring it into our office for the best chance of repositioning it.

A frequent need for an emergency dentist involves tooth extraction. Our dentist may recommend emergency dental extraction in a specific situation such as:

• Excessive tooth decay that has damaged too much of the natural tooth’s structure to be restored
• Gum disease that has advanced to the point that teeth are no longer anchored to the jaw bone
• Wisdom teeth that are impacted or an abscess that cannot be treated with non-emergency care

Our dentist will always make every effort to preserve a patient’s natural tooth rather than extracting it. Still, as you can tell from the above list, there will be times when emergency dental extraction is necessary.

How to Avoid Needing Emergency Dentistry

The most important thing you can do today to lessen the risk of needing emergency dentistry is as simple as practicing preventive dental care. While most people associate preventive dentistry with regular exams and professional cleanings, it also includes appliance therapy such as sports guards and night guards.

Sports guards protect teeth from impact-related injuries such as those mentioned earlier, and night guards protect against night-time bruxism, more commonly known as night-time tooth grinding. Sports injuries and severely worn teeth from bruxism can naturally lead to a need for emergency dentistry. If you want to minimize your risk of needing this type of urgent care, appliance therapy can do it.