People go to their local hospital or urgent-care center emergency room for many different reasons, whether due to injuries, severe illness, unexplained pain, or unusual symptoms. However, your local emergency room is probably not the go-to care facility if you experience a dental emergency. If you chip, crack, or lose a tooth, lose a filling or crown, or have a toothache or inflamed gums, you might spend hours in an emergency room waiting room before an attending physician tells you you need to consult an emergency dentist.

Along with regular examinations and professional cleaning, periodic dental x-rays are typically a standard of care in the maintenance of your oral health. Primarily used to diagnose potential problems within a tooth or below the gumline, dentists also use x-rays as a proactive monitoring tool to track any changes that occur in your teeth and gums over time. In fact, the x-ray’s ability to discern potential problems that cannot be seen by visual inspection makes it one of the most beneficial diagnostic tools in dentistry. While technology makes today’s dental x-rays seem like a relatively recent high tech invention, you might be surprised to learn that x-ray technology has been around for 105 years and that several dentists and physicists from around the world took the first dental x-rays within weeks of each other in 1896.      

Whether through accident, disease or unknown causes, dental emergencies can arise anytime. In the interest of avoiding pain and preventing the potential spread of any oral-related damage or disease, you should always seek emergency dental treatment for oral injuries and rapid-onset emergence of oral pain. The dental experts at Island Tower Dentistry in Marco Island, provide emergency dental treatment to patients in southwest Florida, as well as to seasonal residents or anyone in need of emergency oral care.