Emergency Dentist — Las Vegas, NV
Easing Your Pain & Fixing Your Smile
Without the right people by your side, dealing with a dental emergency can be stressful, scary, and painful. At Summerlin Center for Aesthetic Dentistry, our team’s goal is to ease your discomfort and repair your smile quickly and effectively, so you don’t have to spend your day worrying. Whether you have a severe toothache, knocked out tooth, or a broken restoration, we’re equipped and prepared to handle every dental emergency. As soon as you contact our office, we’ll provide you with over-the-phone first-aid guidance and schedule your appointment as soon as possible.
Why Choose Summerlin Center for Aesthetic Dentistry for Emergency Dental Care?
- One Stop for Comprehensive Dental Treatment
- Wide Variety of Restorations Placed In-House
- Oral Conscious Sedation for Longer Treatments
What to Do in a Dental Emergency
- Call our office right away. The sooner you give us a call, the better chance we have of restoring your oral health. When you contact us, we’ll provide you with first-aid instructions to manage your situation while you wait for your appointment.
- Have an emergency exam. Once you get to our office, we’ll perform an emergency exam to identify the underlying cause of your emergency. Using our findings, we’ll create a custom treatment plan to get your smile back on the right track.
- Get the care you need. During your visit, we may be able to temporarily relieve your pain. However, you might have to return for additional treatment to fully address the problem. Some common solutions for dental emergencies include fillings, dental crowns, root canal therapy, and gum disease treatment.
The Most Common Dental Emergencies
In the face of an emergency, it can be difficult to act quickly and with a clear mind, which is why we offer over-the-phone guidance for our patients who aren’t sure what to do. Below, you’ll find some additional tips on how to handle a situation once you’ve called our office and scheduled your emergency appointment.
Understanding the Cost of Dental Emergencies
The cost of your appointment will depend on what type of treatment you need, which can only be determined once our emergency dentist, Dr. West, has examined the damage. We’ll walk you through any possible treatment choices you may have and discuss payment options with you. Our team is more than happy to prepare insurance claims for you and make sure that you get the high-quality care you deserve.
Keys to Preventing Dental Emergencies
Even though emergencies can’t completely be avoided, there are some precautionary measures you can take to make sure that you don’t experience one. In this next section, you will find a few healthy habits we recommend adopting to protect your teeth and gums from harm. So, read on!
Break Bad Oral Habits
If you bite your nails, use tobacco products, or use your teeth as tools sometimes, don’t worry – we aren’t here to pass judgment. We do, however, need to warn you that habits like these dramatically increase your risk of dental emergencies like chipped, cracked, and fractured teeth. For that reason, we strongly recommend quitting. If you’ve had difficulty doing so in the past, don’t hesitate to ask us for help. We’d be happy to share what has worked for other patients!
Wear a Mouthguard While Playing Sports
There’s a common misconception that you only need to wear a mouthguard if you participate in contact sports, like football. In reality, you should wear one if you lift weights, run, ride your bike, or participate in another solo sport. After all, your teeth are still vulnerable to damage from clenching, grinding, or accidentally falling. Naturally, you don’t want (or need) a really thick mouthguard, so we will have a custom one made so that it’s the appropriate size and fits comfortably.
Avoid Sticky, Hard, and Chewy Foods
Do you enjoy chewy candies, like taffy? Maybe you like snacking on crunchy foods, like popcorn or hard pretzels. Either way, it’s important to exercise caution or, if you can, eliminate them from your diet. After all, sticky, hard, and chewy foods like these can lead to numerous problems – from cracks in your enamel to damaged restorations. That’s why we encourage our patients to stick to more smile-friendly foods, like oatmeal, plain yogurt, sugar-free pudding, and hard-boiled eggs.
Keep Up With Your Dental Hygiene Routine
It’s no secret that you need to commit to a solid oral hygiene regimen in order to keep your teeth and gums healthy. If your brushing and flossing routine has taken a back seat, then there’s no time like the present to change that. Start by brushing for a full two minutes each morning and evening and then incorporate flossing and rinsing with mouthwash at night. Plus, if you’re ever unsure of the proper technique or which products are best, you can always reach out to us!
Visit Us Twice a Year for a Checkup And Cleaning
In short, even if you brush and floss consistently, you need to come to our office twice a year for a checkup and cleaning. These routine visits are essential because they ensure we catch damaged restorations, tooth decay, gum disease, and other common problems in the early stages. They also allow us to remove plaque and tartar before they wreak havoc on your smile, decreasing your risk of dental damage in the process. So, don’t postpone these appointments – prioritize them!
Tooth Extractions
We never want to tell you that a tooth extraction is the only option, but there are cases where it might be unavoidable, such as when a tooth is broken off beneath the gum line or has been completely compromised by decay. Extractions can either be simple or surgical. No matter the case, though, we’ll always prioritize your comfort, and we’ll work quickly to replace the tooth with an implant or an appropriate type of restoration so that your smile doesn’t stay incomplete.
Wisdom Tooth Extractions
The wisdom teeth are four permanent teeth located near the back corners of your mouth that don’t erupt until the late teens or early twenties. When they don’t have enough room to erupt, they’ll cause severe chronic pain, and they can potentially damage the rest of your teeth. To avoid these and other oral health issues, we recommend having potentially problematic wisdom teeth extracted as soon as possible. Get in touch with us today if someone in your family is expecting to receive their wisdom teeth soon.
Dental Emergency FAQs
One of the best ways to be prepared for a dental emergency is to have as many answers ahead of time as possible. That’s why we’ve gathered a few of the most common questions about urgent dental care below for your convenience. If you don’t see the answer you’re looking for or aren’t sure if you’re experiencing a dental emergency, don’t hesitate to call us for the information you need!
Can I Take Pain Relievers If I’m Having a Dental Emergency?
While pain relievers can provide much-needed temporary relief during a dental emergency, they’re certainly not a substitute for the professional dental care needed to treat the source of your discomfort. If you have bleeding in your mouth, remember not to take pain medication that contains aspirin or ibuprofen. Both of these medications act as blood thinners, which could potentially make your bleeding worse.
Do I Still Need to Visit an Emergency Dentist If My Toothache Goes Away?
Just because your tooth suddenly stops hurting doesn’t mean the issue that was causing it has gone away. In fact, numbness in a tooth could potentially indicate that the nerve has been severely damaged or infected. Even if it no longer hurts, your tooth could be in danger of falling out, and the damage or bacteria may spread to the nearby teeth. Let us know right away if your tooth has gone numb or suddenly stopped hurting so we can schedule your appointment right away.
How Can I Tell If I Should Visit an Emergency Dentist?
Not every dental emergency is as easy to identify as a broken or knocked-out tooth. While some dental emergencies are the result of a sudden injury or accident, others slowly build up over a long period of time because of poor oral hygiene or bad chewing habits. If you’re not sure if your situation counts as an emergency or not, give us a call anyways. We’ll help you assess your situation over the phone and determine how urgently you need care. Once we’ve scheduled your appointment accordingly, we’ll give you personalized first-aid tips to help you manage your symptoms until you can reach our office.
When Should I Go to the ER for a Dental Emergency?
Did you know most emergency rooms don’t have a dentist on staff? As such, they’ll be able to stabilize your dental emergency, but you’ll likely still need to see your dentist afterward. Bringing your urgent dental situation to us instead will almost always save you time, money, and discomfort. However, there are certain situations where you should go to the emergency room first. We’ll be happy to repair your smile after the local ER has stabilized conditions such as:
- Dislocated or broken jaw.
- Bleeding in the mouth that hasn’t stopped after 10 minutes.
- Swelling in the face, neck, or jaw that’s making it difficult to swallow or breathe.
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