Call us. (607) 785-3339. If you are in pain, bleeding, or holding a tooth that used to be in your mouth, stop reading and dial. Everything below will still be here.
Dental emergencies are one of the few things in dentistry where hours genuinely change the outcome. A knocked out tooth has a window measured in minutes. An infection that looks manageable on Friday can be a swollen face by Sunday. We keep room in the schedule for exactly this, and we would rather you called and turned out to be fine than waited and turned out not to be.
Outside office hours, call the same number and ask to be transferred to the on-call dentist.
Leave a detailed message about what happened and where it hurts. One of our dentists will call you back. You are not waiting until Monday to speak to somebody.
What to Do in the Next Ten Minutes
Find your situation below, do that, then call. These steps buy time, they do not replace treatment. Our Learning Center has a fuller guide to handling a dental emergency worth reading before you need it.
A permanent tooth has been knocked out. Pick it up by the crown, never the root. If it is dirty, rinse it gently with milk or water for a few seconds without scrubbing. If you can, put it back in the socket and bite softly on a clean cloth. If you cannot, keep it in a cup of milk, or tucked in your cheek. Get to us inside the hour. Do not try to reinsert a child's baby tooth, that can damage the permanent tooth forming above it.
A tooth is cracked or broken. Save any pieces, rinse your mouth with warm water, and hold a cold compress to the outside of your cheek. Avoid chewing on that side.
A severe toothache. Rinse with warm salt water and floss gently either side of the tooth in case something is trapped. Over the counter anti-inflammatories help. Do not hold aspirin against the gum, it burns the tissue and does nothing for the tooth.
A filling or crown has come out. Keep the crown. Temporary dental cement from any pharmacy will hold it for a day or two. Never use household glue, it can make the tooth unrestorable.
Bleeding that will not stop. Firm, constant pressure on folded gauze for a full fifteen minutes without peeking. If it is still bleeding after that, call.
My husband needed emergency dental services. I called the office at 8 am. He was seen at 9 am the same day. They were wonderful!
Louise C. · Google Review
I had a dental emergency and I have never had such a team to assist me and monitor me throughout my procedure. Kudos to Dr. Troy and all of the staff- I now have scheduled my new patient appointment! 5 or more stars!
Walt H. · Google Review
What Is an Emergency, and What Can Wait Until Monday
Not everything that hurts needs to be seen today, and pretending otherwise would waste your time and ours. Here is where the line actually falls.
Go to a hospital emergency room, not a dental office, if facial swelling is making it hard to breathe or swallow, if swelling is spreading toward your eye or down your neck, if you have a fever alongside it, or if you have had a blow to the head or a suspected jaw fracture. A dental office is not equipped for an airway problem. Call us afterward and we will take over the dental side.
Call us today for a knocked out or dislodged tooth, a broken tooth with sharp edges or exposed nerve, pain that is keeping you awake or not responding to over the counter medication, a visible abscess or a bad taste that keeps coming back, bleeding that will not settle, or a lost crown on a tooth that is now sensitive.
It can usually wait for a normal appointment if you have a chip with no pain and no sharp edge, a lost filling that is not sensitive, a dull ache that comes and goes without swelling, or food catching in one spot. Call anyway and we will tell you which of these you have. Our Learning Center has a longer guide to telling an emergency from something that can wait.
Who You Will Be Calling
Ninety seconds on the practice, the team and the building you will be walking into. Worth knowing if today is the day you find out.
What Happens When You Get Here
The first priority is getting you out of pain, and that usually happens before anything else does. From there it depends on what we find, and we will tell you what we find before we do anything about it.
If the tooth needs imaging, our Orthophos SL 3D system shows the root and the surrounding bone in three dimensions rather than the flat guess a single x-ray gives. If a cracked tooth needs a crown, our in-office CEREC system can design, mill and place the permanent one in the same visit, so an emergency does not turn into three weeks of temporaries. If the pulp is infected, a root canal can often be started immediately, which is what actually ends the pain. If a tooth cannot be saved, we will tell you, remove it properly, and talk about preserving the socket so a replacement stays an option later.
Being able to do all of that in one building on Clayton Avenue is the whole point. Nothing gets referred out mid-crisis, and the dentist who sees you at eight in the morning is the one who finishes the job.
If the reason you have been putting off calling is fear rather than the tooth, say so on the phone. A large share of the people who come to us for emergencies had been avoiding a dentist for years, and our sedation options exist precisely for that. Nobody here is going to lecture you about how long you waited.
Emergency Questions We Get on the Phone
Will you actually see me today?
That is the plan. We hold time in the daily schedule for emergencies rather than treating them as interruptions, which is why patients so often mention being seen within an hour or two of calling. Call early if you can. Tuesday and Thursday we open at 7am and run until 7pm, which gives us the widest window of the week to fit somebody in.
It is the middle of the night, or the weekend. What do I do?
Call the main line anyway: (607) 785-3339. You will have the option to be transferred to our on-call dentist. Leave a detailed message covering what happened, where the pain is and when it started, and one of our dentists will call you back. Many practices send you to voicemail until the next business day. We do not.
I am not one of your patients. Will you still see me?
Yes. A good share of our emergency visits are people who have never been here, including visitors passing through the area and people whose own dentist could not fit them in. You do not need to become a patient afterward, though plenty do. If you want to, our new patient page covers what that involves.
Should I just go to the emergency room?
For swelling that affects breathing or swallowing, facial trauma, a suspected broken jaw, or bleeding that will not stop, yes, go straight to the ER. For a toothache or a broken tooth, an ER can give you antibiotics and pain relief but cannot treat the tooth, so you will end up at a dentist anyway having spent a night and a much larger bill getting there. Call us first for anything that is genuinely dental.
The pain stopped on its own. Am I in the clear?
Not necessarily, and this is the one that catches people out. When a badly infected nerve finally dies, the pain often stops, and it feels like recovery. The infection is still there and has simply lost the nerve endings that were reporting it. It carries on into the bone quietly until it announces itself as swelling, usually at the worst possible moment. If you had severe pain that vanished without treatment, get it looked at.
What is an emergency visit going to cost?
It depends entirely on what is wrong, and we will not know until we look. What we will do is tell you the cost before we treat, not after, with your insurance benefits already applied. Most plans cover emergency exams and x-rays. Do not let uncertainty about the bill be the reason you sit on an infection over a weekend. Our payment options page covers the plans we work with and the financing available.
We keep time open for this.
If something has broken, come loose or started hurting, call us and we will get you seen. Reach us at the number below, or send a request and we will call you back.
