We often get patients presenting to us with toothache. This is no surprise, I hear you say, as you are a dental practice! However, the amount of times this occurs, where simple remedial work could have been done months or years earlier to avoid the toothache always amazes me.
We understand that often patients are apprehensive going to the dentist, especially if they have had a bad experience in the past, but putting off dental treatment is often the wrong thing to do. Nowadys, having treatment at the dentists is fairly straightforward and pain-free, so, hopefully, this shouldn’t be a barrier anymore. One of the most common comments we get is that a tooth broke a while ago, but was not paining, so nothing was done about it. Often, if the tooth was looked at by the dentist when the problem arose it would be simple to fix and cheaper. The problem does not go away if there is no pain. Waiting till it does pain (which usually happens sooner or later), often makes the treatment harder to do. When a tooth is painful, sometimes the anaesthetic cannot work, which means not much can be done to relieve you of the pain immediately. When it is painful, it also means that sometimes the tooth must be removed, when it could have been saved months/years earlier. Last, but not least, sometimes, as a result of leaving a problem tooth untreated, the cost of remedial work is more expensive. This is because often the tooth is more broken down than ealier with more decay. Also if the tooth must be removed, the cost of filling the gap with a bridge, denture or implant is more than if a tooth just needed a filling originally.
I suppose one of the problems with teeth is that you could easily assume that if a tooth is not hurting, then it is not a problem. Please remember, that by the time a tooth becomes painful, its often too late and the tooth has to be lost. Also, if a tooth breaks, bacteria from the saliva, gets into the tooth, and can ultimately infect the nerve canal of the tooth causing it to die away. Not only that, but bacteria easily gets caught in rough areas of broken teeth causing new tooth decay.
So, if you are aware of any dental problems, it pays to go to the dentist before they become painful problems!
Tags: dental pain, dental treatment, dentists, toothache
[...] Visit your dentist regularly for examinations and hygienist appointments. The amount of pain, discomfort and expense this simple measure prevents cannot be over emphasised. Patients often forget their teeth whilst there is no pain. However, dental disease is silent until usually it is too late and then more money is spent correcting the problems that have arisen than would of been spent preventing the problem. Leaving seeing the dentist for years almost inevitably means large bills to correct all the disease that has built up within that period. [...]