My tooth hurts!! …What’s next?
Imagine you are sitting at your desk at work taking care of all your tasks for the day and you realize, “WOW!! My tooth hurts!!”
You try to keep getting through your work, but the pain is taking over your ability to concentrate.
So you call your dentist.
But they cannot get you in for another couple of weeks.
You sit at your desk thinking, “What!? My tooth hurts now, and I need relief fast!”
That’s when you stumble upon the number of Thomas L. Anderson and Associates and find that we take same day emergency patients. At our office we always take same day emergency patients whether you are a current patient with us or not. Anyone who has ever experienced tooth pain can tell you it is not an option to wait for an appointment later in the week. It needs resolved as quickly as possible. That is why our office makes it a priority to treat emergency patients even in our busiest of schedules.
My tooth hurts! What’s next?
Once you arrive at our office and we find the source of your tooth pain, it’s time to make a decision together on how to resolve the problem. There are different ways to treat an infected tooth, and we always want our patients to know all the options, so they can make an informed decision on how to treat the angry tooth. Saving the tooth with a root canal and crown is the best treatment whenever possible.
A lot of patients will tell us, “My tooth hurts! I just want it removed.”
While having the tooth removed will clean up the infection and pain, it will start to cause more problems down the road. When a tooth is removed we lose bone supporting the adjacent teeth, the teeth start drifting in to fill spaces leading to malocclusion problems, and super eruption of opposing teeth.
If a tooth must be removed, it is always advised to replace the missing tooth in one of the following ways:
- Dental implants are the best treatment to fill a gap caused by a missing tooth because they look, function, and feel like a natural tooth.
- The downside to having an implant placed is the time it takes for healing. It can take over a year and many trips to your dentist to have an implant placed.
- Another option is to place a non-removable bridge. A bridge is made up of two or more crowns “bridging” the gap with a false tooth. These are often great for filling in the space, but they have downsides too.
- Bridges need crowns to support them, so often times the teeth supporting the bridge did not need to be reduced. By choosing an implant, the surrounding healthy teeth do not need to be damaged.
- Lastly, spaces can be filled with a removable partial denture. This is an appliance that consists of replacement teeth attached to a gum-colored base.
- There are also downsides to choosing this alternative. Partial dentures clasp on to the other healthy teeth, and put strain on them. This strain often causes problems to the teeth supporting the partial denture. Not to mention how much patients dislike having a foreign appliance in their mouth that they have to take in and out.
This is why when patient come in and tell us, “My tooth hurts! I just want you to pull it out!” We will always go over other treatment options as well, because there is no adequate replacement for a natural tooth!
If you need to make an emergency dental appointment, we’re here to help … FAST! Whether you live closer to our location on the Country Club Plaza, the Independence/Lee’s Summit area or in Downtown Kansas City, the team and doctors at Thomas L. Anderson and Associates would love to be your family’s dental home. Whether you are ready for a dental exam and cleaning or have a dental emergency, please contact us and schedule an appointment today.