Emergency Dentist in Rawalpindi

Some dental problems can wait for a normal appointment and some cannot, and the difference is not how much it hurts. Swelling that is spreading into the face or neck is the one to take most seriously, because infection in those spaces is a medical problem rather than a dental inconvenience.

This is the one situation where what a bystander does matters more than what the dentist does later. A permanent tooth that is put back into its socket quickly can reattach. The same tooth left dry on a table for two hours usually cannot.

Pick the tooth up by the crown, never the root. If it is dirty, rinse it briefly in milk or saline - not by scrubbing, and not under a running tap for long. Push it gently back into the socket the right way round and bite on a clean cloth to hold it. If you cannot replant it, keep it in milk, or in the patient's own saliva. Never in plain water. Then come straight in.

A knocked-out baby tooth is the exception - it is not replanted, because doing so can damage the permanent tooth developing above it.

A tooth that aches constantly, wakes you at night, or hurts for minutes after something cold has almost always reached the nerve. Painkillers help you sleep but they do nothing about the cause, and the pain will keep escalating until the nerve is treated or the tooth is removed.

A specific warning: if a severe toothache suddenly stops on its own, that is not recovery. The nerve has usually finished dying, and infection continues quietly into the bone. People routinely take that silence as a reason to cancel, and return months later with a tooth that can no longer be saved.

The first job is to get you out of pain, which usually means anaesthetising the tooth and either opening it to release pressure or removing it, depending on what is savable. Definitive treatment can follow at a planned appointment once you are comfortable.

Where there is a spreading infection, drainage and antibiotics may come first and the tooth is dealt with afterwards. Antibiotics alone are not a treatment for a dental abscess - they buy time, and the source still has to be addressed.