What Do You Do If Your Tooth Pain Is Unbearable?
April 1, 2022
What Tooth Pain?
It is any throbbing, dull, or piercing sensation you experience in your mouth resulting from a problematic tooth. Tooth pain can take various forms, depending on how a tooth is damaged or at risk of damage. Many toothaches result from infections or inflammation. Inflammation can occur due to external trauma like an injury or an internal problem like an infection.
For as long as you can manage your pain levels at home, you cannot appreciate the role of a dentist near you. However, treating tooth pain is mandatory, as it only worsens with time. The pain may even start causing numbness in your gums, then begin again when the infection spreads to other parts of your oral cavity.
What Is Considered an Emergency for Teeth?
Tooth emergencies come in various forms, depending on the underlying cause of your problem. At Ellerslie Dental Clinic, we have categorized teeth emergencies as the following:
- Tooth cavity or decay – while tooth caries may not cause too much pain as they begin forming, as they progress, your pain may become unbearable. Many people who suffer from severe toothaches have one or more tooth cavities.
- Tooth abscess – is a pocket that forms at the roots of teeth close to the gum tissue, usually filled with pus. Having an abscessed tooth means that either most or all of the pulp inside your tooth is dead.
- Tooth fracture – features a cracked or broken tooth. Although not all tooth fractures cause severe pain to merit emergency dental care, several do. The crack or split on your tooth can damage part of the nerve endings in the tooth, causing significant tooth pain.
- Damaged tooth filling – a filling is meant to protect and repair a damaged tooth. When the filling is cracked, chipped, crumbled, or worn out, it exposed the treated tooth to bacteria, risking re-infection.
- Bruxism – is a condition featuring excessive teeth grinding, so much so that you incur many dental issues. Some problems that arise due to excessive teeth grinding are heightened teeth sensitivity, worn-out enamels, jaw pain, cracked and chipped teeth, to mention a few.
- Tooth eruption – when a new tooth is growing, it can cause pain in your jawbone and gums. It is especially the case for wisdom teeth that erupt last and may have insufficient room to grow properly. It may result in impacted teeth, which is a case of a tooth partially erupting, leaving the rest of it stuck underneath the gum tissue.
- Foreign objects stuck between teeth – can be food debris or a foreign material like a toothpick.
Should I Go to The Dentist If My Toothache Is Unbearable?
Any tooth pain that you consider unbearable merits urgent care by an emergency dentist near you. If you keep holding off your pain or suppressing it with over-the-counter medication, it means that you are not addressing the root of your problem. Eventually, the situation will worsen so that you incur permanent damage that could be otherwise avoidable if you called a dentist in Edmonton emergency dental clinic.
Treatment Options Available for Tooth Pain
Your dentist in a dental clinic in Edmonton will first examine your oral cavity to determine the underlying cause of your pain. Various causes have different treatment options. The common treatment approaches for dental pain are:
- Antibiotics – to rid your mouth of bacteria.
- Tooth extraction – to remove the problematic case. Usually, tooth extractions are the best resolve for impacted teeth and severely damaged teeth.
- Dental filling – to repair the damaged tooth, more so when a cavity is the root cause of the tooth pain.
- Root canal – is a procedure for reinstating a damaged tooth, particularly for tooth decay and abscessed teeth. The treatment rids your tooth of damaged nerves and soft tissues, treating the pain and killing bacteria.
- Repairing or replacing damaged fillings or other oral appliances – will help avoid the re-infection of the tooth.
- Oral mouthpiece – your dentist will custom-make an oral device for treating bruxism to prevent teeth gliding against each other, especially at night.