Dental pain has a habit of arriving on a Friday evening. Here is how to tell what needs attention immediately, what can reasonably wait, and what genuinely helps in the meantime.
Get seen the same day
These are the ones where waiting carries real risk:
- Facial or neck swelling, particularly if it is spreading or if one side of your face looks visibly different
- Difficulty swallowing, breathing, or opening your mouth
- Fever alongside dental pain
- A knocked-out permanent tooth. This is genuinely time-critical, see below
- Uncontrolled bleeding after an extraction or injury
- Severe pain that painkillers are not touching
An untreated abscess is the one dental problem that can become a medical emergency. Infection in the jaw can spread into the tissues of the face and neck. If you have swelling plus fever, or any difficulty swallowing or breathing, treat it as urgent and seek care immediately.
A knocked-out tooth: the first 30 minutes
If a permanent tooth is knocked out completely, what you do in the next half hour largely decides whether it can be saved.
- Pick it up by the crown — the chewing part — never by the root.
- If it is dirty, rinse it briefly in milk or saline. Do not scrub it, and do not use soap.
- If you can, put it back in the socket and bite gently on a clean cloth to hold it.
- If you cannot, keep it in milk, or in your own saliva, held inside your cheek. Not water, which damages the root surface cells.
- Call us immediately.
A baby tooth that is knocked out should not be reinserted, as that can damage the permanent tooth developing behind it.
Call soon, but it can usually wait until morning
- A broken or chipped tooth with no severe pain
- A lost filling or crown. Keep the crown if you have it, we can often recement it
- A dull ache that responds to painkillers
- Sensitivity that lingers after hot or cold
- A sore spot from a denture or an orthodontic wire
What actually helps while you wait
Do: take over-the-counter painkillers as directed on the packet. Rinse gently with warm salt water for sore gums. Use a cold compress on the outside of your face for swelling or injury. Sleep with your head slightly elevated: lying flat increases blood pressure in the head, which is why toothache so reliably gets worse at night.
Do not: put aspirin directly against the tooth or gum, which burns the tissue and does not help the pain. Do not apply heat to a swollen face. Do not try to drain an abscess yourself. And do not ignore it because the pain stopped. See below.
The trap: pain that goes away
Severe toothache that stops on its own is usually not good news. It often means the nerve has finally died rather than that the problem resolved, and the infection then continues silently into the bone at the root tip until it swells.
If you had significant pain and it has now gone, please still get it looked at.
Reaching us
Call (630) 427-1800 and say you are in pain: we keep room in the schedule for urgent problems. Our office hours are Monday 9am–4pm, Tuesday 10am–6pm, Thursday and Friday 10am–6pm, and Saturday 9am–2pm. We are closed Wednesday and Sunday.
In the event of an emergency during non-office hours please leave a message and someone will contact you.
