The key first steps to take in any dental emergency

Dealing with pain in your teeth or gums can be a deeply unpleasant and often quite scary experience. The pain can spike from moderate to severe seemingly out of nowhere and sometimes, emergency dental care may be your only option. Here, we’ll take you through a number of steps you can take that can help nullify the pain, as well as taking a look at some of the ways we can help. We understand that emergency dental care can be a rather daunting experience and hopefully these can help ease your mind, should you find yourself, or someone else, suffering from any excessive pain in this area.

What is a dental emergency?

Before we go any further, it’s really important to clarify what qualifies as a dental emergency. A knocked-out tooth, extruded tooth or broken tooth always qualifies as an emergency and you should try to get dental emergency care as soon as possible. Swelling of your gum, especially if it appears to be spreading, should also be addressed as soon as possible. Of course, even if none of the aforementioned ailments are obvious, but if the pain is excruciating to the point where you can’t eat, maintain your concentration or sleep, you should also seek emergency care.

What should you do first?

If the pain is agonising, we’d recommend ringing an emergency dental hotline as quickly as possible. We advise doing this first because, in an instance where your call is during out of hours periods, it may take some time before you can actually be given your emergency dental treatment. By covering this step first, it will reduce the time you’ll be waiting and reduce the chance of the pain growing in intensity.

Whilst you wait to be seen to, there are a number of other things that may help you ease the pain. If there is bleeding, as could be the case with your gums or a knocked-out tooth, make sure you get a cold, wet towel, and apply pressure to the area where the blood is coming from. We also advise that, if your tooth has cracked, chipped or fallen out, that you try and find any pieces of it, as this can go a long way in the mending process.

Next, bite down on the towel to keep it held in place. If there are no signs of bleeding, but there is prevalent swelling, you can hold something cold to your cheek, like an icepack or frozen peas. This helps to numb the area and reduce the pain coming from the swelled-up area. The final suggestion we can offer for mitigating pain is to use paracetamol or ibuprofen if it’s safe for you or the person suffering to do so.

How can we help?

At AP Smilecare, we want to do everything we can to help, to make sure you’re free from the pain as quickly as possible. We offer same-day emergency appointments in Blackburn, as long as it’s during office hours and anyone is free to call our emergency advice line at on 0800 123 4010. We also provide our very own Denplan scheme for more affordable private dental care. We’ll always try and get you seen to as quickly as possible, especially in an emergency.