If you suffer severe tooth pain or lose a tooth, you likely recognize that this is a dental emergency, which means you need to call your dentist straight away. However, sometimes you might experience mild symptoms in your smile that you feel tempted to ignore. But these conditions could be early signs of a larger dental concern.
You should not wait until your next regularly scheduled dental appointment if you see changes in your oral health. But which dental symptoms actually need this emergency dental attention? Explore three seemingly minor dental problems that may require urgent treatment from your dentist when you read on.
Sensitive Teeth
Have you ever felt a sudden jolting pain in your tooth when biting into food? This pain can feel excruciating, even if it fades as soon as you remove the food from the affected tooth. Tooth sensitivity occurs when an external stimulus, like food, touches an exposed nerve within a tooth.
Usually, an outer shell of enamel shields nerves inside a tooth. But if the enamel erodes, nerves become exposed and vulnerable, leaving you in danger of tooth sensitivity pain.
Because the pain is intermittent, some people may try to tolerate and ignore their sensitive teeth. But damaged enamel may mean your teeth face a greater risk of tooth decay. And tooth sensitivity might be a symptom of cavities or a dental injury.
Tooth sensitivity will not go away on its own in most cases. So make sure you tell your dentist about this issue as soon as you can.
Irritated Gum Tissue
Your teeth rely on smooth, pink, healthy gums, the connective tissue that helps the teeth stay firmly in place in the mouth. You might take gum health for granted until an issue arises. If your gums appear irritated, this can feel inconvenient. But it might actually mean you have a larger oral health issue.
Swelling, redness, soreness, and bleeding in the gums are all signs of the early stage of gum disease, gingivitis. This infection in the gums will eat away at the tissue and spread to the teeth and jawbone without periodontal therapy from a dentist to get rid of excess bacteria.
Gum disease can leave lasting damage to your smile, even tooth loss, in some cases. To preserve your smile, you should seek treatment for gum disease as soon as you notice symptoms in the gum tissue.
Chronic Bad Breath
Many people associate bad breath as an issue that occurs when you skip brushing your teeth or when you consume a strongly flavored meal. Usually, you can get rid of bad-smelling breath by washing away lingering food particles in your mouth with oral hygiene efforts.
But if bad breath persists, it might be a symptom of an underlying dental concern like gum disease. If excess bacteria remain in the mouth, such as deep in the gum pockets, it can give off a foul odor that will affect your breath.
As mentioned, you will need a dentist to treat periodontal disease. But if you suffer from chronic bad breath, you should speak to your dentist to pinpoint its cause and find appropriate treatment.