Along with regular dental services, our dentist Richmond provides emergency care. But what constitutes a dental emergency and how can you get in contact with us now if you need an appointment?
What divides the majority of dental care from emergency treatment is time. If a procedure is time critical either because its effectiveness will drop off radically if treatment is not given soon or because the symptoms are too severe to cope with everyday activities, you have a dental emergency.
What to expect at an emergency dental care appointment
Even a regular appointment for a well-known patient treatment varies widely, because it is all about meeting patients' needs and everyone's needs are different. This is even more acute in the event of emergency care, where not only the patient may not be particularly well known to the surgery, but the extent and possible different causes of the emergency can be very different.
Treating a chipped tooth from a skateboarding accident in a teenage patient with very few other injuries is very different from treating a chipped tooth in an elderly patient from a traffic accident who has also received complex spinal injuries.
There may be some pre-treatment sterilising providing moderate pain relief or controlling any bleeding.
There are similar themes; treatment will start with an assessment which may or may not include X-rays depending on the severity of the injury and whether it is observable with the naked eye. There will be a brief discussion with our dentist Richmond on what the treatment options are and their pros and cons.
Once consent is received, treatment will begin immediately; maybe you need follow-up appointments, antibiotics may be prescribed or pain relief and you may book in for follow-up appointments with us or with your regular clinic if not registered with us.
Dental anxiety during a dental emergency
Many types of dental emergencies have occurred because a patient is extremely concerned about attending the clinic and also, they have been having symptoms for some time but have put off seeing our dentist Richmond. But then something has changed resulting in a dramatic worsening and their distressed state, which has then forced them into the clinic.
We are very empathetic to patients with an aversion to dentistry and understand that this is a deeply unpleasant process for them. Many patients often feel that they are being judged or ashamed that they have allowed the situation to get to this point, but the priority is to save teeth when possible and resolve the underlying cause. The role of our clinic is to support patients not berate them.
If you require emergency treatment please feel free to contact the clinic, as we do not want you to suffer discomfort unnecessarily.
We performed dental extractions as a last resort. When in extreme pain or discomfort it can be tempting to request an extraction as a quick fix, but losing a tooth is irreversible and should really only happen when absolutely necessary. Any emergency fixes will be done with the goal of maintaining as much of your natural tooth as possible, even if later non-emergency procedures result in extracting them.