Emergency Dental Care in Dubai

Severe toothache. Take the painkiller you normally tolerate at its recommended dose, keep your head raised when lying down, and avoid very hot or very cold food on that side. Heat on the face makes swelling worse; a cold compress on the outside of the cheek helps. Do not hold aspirin against the gum, which burns the tissue.

Knocked-out permanent tooth. Hold it by the crown, rinse briefly in milk or saline if it is dirty, replace it into the socket and bite gently on a clean cloth. If it cannot be replaced, keep it in milk — not water, not a tissue — and come immediately.

Broken tooth. Keep any fragment in milk or saline. Rinse the mouth with warm water and cover a sharp edge with sugar-free chewing gum or orthodontic wax if it is cutting the tongue.

Bleeding after an extraction. Bite firmly on rolled gauze or a clean handkerchief for twenty minutes without checking it. Avoid rinsing, spitting and hot drinks. If bleeding continues after two cycles of firm pressure, contact the clinic.

The character of the pain tells the dentist a good deal before anything is examined. Sharp pain to cold that stops as soon as the stimulus is removed usually points to an exposed dentine surface or a leaking restoration. Pain to cold or heat that lingers for minutes suggests the nerve is inflamed beyond recovery, which is the point at which root canal treatment becomes the treatment rather than a filling.

Pain on biting a single tooth points to a crack, a high restoration or inflammation at the root tip. Throbbing pain that is worse lying down, with the tooth feeling raised, indicates infection around the root. Diffuse pain across the upper back teeth on both sides is frequently sinus in origin rather than dental.

Pain that stopped after several bad days is not resolution. It usually means the nerve has died, and the infection that follows is what brings people back a fortnight later with a swollen face.

Swelling means infection has left the tooth and entered the surrounding tissue, and it is the presentation that needs attention soonest. The signs that raise the urgency are swelling that crosses the jawline or moves towards the eye, swelling under the tongue or in the floor of the mouth, fever, difficulty opening the mouth, and any difficulty swallowing or breathing. The last two are hospital problems, not clinic problems.

Treatment addresses the source. Depending on what is found that means draining the abscess, opening and cleaning the root canal system, or removing the tooth. Antibiotics have a role in controlling spread, but they do not cure an infection whose source remains in place, and prescribing them alone is why some patients cycle through three courses in a year for the same tooth.

Injuries to the front teeth are common in sport, cycling and falls, and the first hour decides the outcome for a knocked-out permanent tooth. Reimplantation as soon as possible, with the tooth handled by the crown only, gives the best chance; storage in milk buys time where reimplantation on the spot is not possible.

A tooth that has been displaced rather than lost is repositioned and splinted. A fractured tooth is assessed for whether the nerve is exposed, since that changes the treatment from a restoration to nerve treatment. Fragments are kept, because a clean fragment can often be bonded back.

Every injured tooth needs follow-up even when it looks intact and feels normal. A tooth that took a blow can lose its blood supply weeks or months later and darken, and root resorption after trauma is found on review radiographs rather than reported by the patient.

An emergency appointment has one immediate objective: identify the source and relieve it. The dentist takes the history of the pain, examines the tooth and surrounding tissues, tests the response of the tooth to cold and to pressure, and takes a radiograph. A dental operating microscope is available at the same appointment, and in an emergency it earns its place on one question in particular: a tooth that hurts sharply on biting with nothing visible on the radiograph is usually cracked, and a crack is often only findable under magnification. Whether the crack stops in the crown or runs into the root decides whether the tooth is restored or removed.

Where the situation needs three dimensions — a suspected root fracture, a tooth with unclear anatomy, an injury involving bone — a CBCT scan is available on site; see CBCT and dental X-ray.

Treatment at that visit is aimed at the problem rather than at the whole mouth: opening and cleaning a root canal system, draining an abscess, dressing an exposed dentine surface, re-cementing a crown, smoothing a sharp edge, splinting a displaced tooth, or removing a tooth that cannot be saved.

The definitive plan follows once the acute phase is settled. What is not appropriate is presenting a full treatment plan to someone in pain and asking them to agree to it in that state; the emergency visit deals with the emergency, and the rest is discussed at a planned consultation.

An emergency assessment is charged as a consultation, starting from AED 650. It covers the examination and the diagnosis; any radiographs are quoted separately.

Treatment carried out at the same visit is quoted before it is started. Where the acute problem is settled but definitive treatment remains — a root canal to complete, a crown to make, an extraction site to restore — that work is set out in a written plan afterwards, so decisions with long-term consequences are not made while in pain.

At ELEMENTAL this treatment is carried out by Dr. Artem Shyshko, General Dentist.