03/24/2020
What Constitutes a Dental Emergency?
The ADA recognizes that state governments and state dental associations may be best positioned to recommend to the dentists in their regions the amount of time to keep their offices closed to all but emergency care. This is fluid situation and those closest to the issue may best understand the local challenges being faced.
DENTAL EMERGENCY
This guidance may change as the COVID-19 pandemic progresses. Dentists should use their professional judgment in determining a patient’s need for urgent or emergency care.
Dental emergencies are potentially life threatening and require immediate treatment to stop ongoing tissue bleeding, alleviate severe pain or infection, and include:
• Uncontrolled bleeding
• Cellulitis or a diffuse soft tissue bacterial infection with intra-oral or extra-oral swelling that potentially compromise the patient’s airway
• Trauma involving facial bones, potentially compromising the patient’s airway
Urgent dental care focuses on the management of conditions that Other urgent dental care:
DENTAL NON EMERGENCY PROCEDURES
Routine or non-urgent dental procedures includes but are not limited to:
• Initial or periodic oral examinations and recall visits, including routine radiographs
• Routine dental cleaning and preventive therapies
• Orthodontic procedures other than those to address acute issues (e.g. pain, infection, trauma)
• Extraction of asymptomatic teeth
• Restorative dentistry including treatment of asymptomatic carious lesions
• Aesthetic dental procedures
Updated 3/19/20
FOR THE LATEST UPDATES, VISIT ADA.ORG/VIRUS
require immediate attention to relieve severe pain and/or risk of infection and to alleviate the burden on hospital emergency departments. These should be treated as minimally invasively as possible.
• Severe dental pain from pulpal inflammation
• Pericoronitis or third-molar pain
• Extensive dental caries or defective restorations causing pain
• Manage with interim restorative techniques when possible (silver diamine fluoride, glass ionomers)
• Surgical post-operative osteitis, dry socket dressing changes •
• Abscess, or localized bacterial infection resulting in localized
pain and swelling •
• Tooth fracture resulting in pain or causing soft tissue trauma
• Dental trauma with avulsion/luxation •
oncology patients
Denture adjustments or repairs when function impeded
Replacing temporary filling on endo access openings in patients experiencing pain
• Dental treatment required prior to critical medical procedures
• Final crown/bridge cementation if the temporary restoration is lost,
broken or causing gingival irritation
• Biopsy of abnormal tissue
• Snipping or adjustment of an orthodontic wire or appliances piercing or ulcerating the oral mucosa
• Suture removal
Denture adjustment on radiation/
Stay informed with Coronavirus (COVID-19) information & guidance from the American Dental Association