How to Get an Emergency Dentist Appointment?
For an emergency dental appointment, contact your chosen dentist directly to assess if it’s urgent or a routine check-up before booking.
Requesting an emergency appointment is simple. You will need to contact the dentist of your choice to arrange. However, before making the call, we suggest determining if your problem is, in fact, an emergency or if you need to schedule a check-up instead. That said, if you’ve been in pain for longer than 48 hours that’s not relieved by over-the-counter medication or accompanied by swelling, we recommend making an urgent appointment.
What is a dental emergency?
A dental emergency is pain and discomfort that prevents you from carrying out your usual daily tasks or sleeping. Unlike a medical emergency, a dental emergency does not require you to go to A&E and is handled by your dentist.
Dental emergencies can include:
- Severe dental pain, toothache or throbbing
- Uncontrolled bleeding in the mouth or swelling
- The tooth knocked or come loose from injury or trauma
- Tooth abscess, infection, impacted wisdom teeth
Understanding when a situation is not a dental emergency can save you money on same-day emergency appointment fees. For example, when you’ve cracked a tooth or lost a crown or filling, it’s unlikely to be deemed a dental emergency, even though you should address these problems as soon as possible.
Toothache, in some circumstances, is also unlikely to be regarded as a dental emergency unless the pain is severe.
If you believe your situation requires swift action, and an urgent appointment but is not an emergency, you can still contact the practice to see if they can fit your case in as soon as possible.
More often than not, we understand that you might feel uncomfortable or have cosmetic concerns and will be able to schedule you to get it sorted.
Getting an emergency appointment
It’s important to note that once you’ve identified whether your situation is, in fact, a dental emergency, you’ll need to contact a dentist to see if they have space to take you.
Practices like ours commonly keep several emergency appointments available, which require patients to be seen within the next 24 hours.
Appointments might also be available outside the practice’s usual operating hours.
However, right now, many NHS practices are limited with the services they can provide as they have reached their capacity, which means sadly, practices across the UK are unable to accept new NHS patients, as well as offer a full NHS service to many of their currently registered NHS patients.
Patients in emergencies, therefore, might have no choice but to seek private emergency and routine care if they are unable to access an appointment.
That said, you can try and speak to 111, who are always available to assist and help you access urgent dental assistance if you cannot go private.
More information
When waiting for your emergency appointment, do your best to not aggravate your issue and take specific steps to limit the risks.
For example, if you have a suspected tooth abscess, it’s recommended that you avoid hot food and drink and use a soft toothbrush.
Before your appointment, which can also offer you some pain relief, you can swill your mouth with warm salt water, which will disinfect the area.
On the other hand, if you’re missing a tooth, clean it with running water and, if possible, place it back into the socket. If that’s not possible, it’s best to keep your tooth in milk before you see the dentist, which will help maintain the tooth's pH balance and preserve the living elements. Keep the socket clean and free from debris in order to avoid causing an infection.
Emergency appointments are a little different to your routine check-ups.
For example, the dentist will be more focused on locating and treating the source of the problem.
In some instances, to relieve the source of pain, a tooth extraction might be necessary, if the decay is too advanced and there’s nothing that can be done to save the tooth.
However, all treatments and possible options will be discussed with you before undertaking the procedure.
If a tooth is missing, the dentist might be able to reinsert it, but this will depend on how soon you can get an emergency appointment and the condition of the knocked-out tooth. If it’s possible, the dentist will use a splint that attaches to either side of the teeth and is removed a few weeks later.
However, if we cannot reinsert your lost tooth, we would have to discover tooth replacement treatments like dental bridges or dental implants.
If your visit is due to a dental abscess, we will assess the affected area and attempt to remove it. Several procedures can be carried out, depending on the scenario.
However, an incision can be made into the affected area to drain it, although this is a short-term solution to the issue. Subsequent root canals might be required to remove the abscess from the tooth, or an extraction if a root canal is not viable.
Our dentists aim to see patients on the day of their call or within the next 24 hours.
Make sure to call our practice as soon as possible, especially early in the morning to book of these reserved appointments, and our reception team will do their best to get you seen as soon as possible.
