Urgent Care

Should you go to Urgent Care for a dental emergency.

Dental emergencies always tend to pop up at the worst possible time, specifically on the weekends and holidays, leaving patients with limited options. For those living in rural areas, a hospital emergency room is often the only avenue for relief. For those living closer to major metropolitan areas, an urgent care center may also be an option. Very few areas of the United States are fortunate enough to have emergency dental offices offering evening and/or weekend hours. If you live in Missouri, you are more fortunate than most states when it comes to emergency dental care. In the Kansas City area, South Kansas City Emergency Dental offers appointments in the evening and on the weekends. In the St. Louis area, Urgent Dental STL has 4 locations in the metropolitan area.

An urgent care office is a medical facility that provides walk-in, non-emergency care for illnesses or injuries needing prompt attention.  Urgent Care facilities commonly see patients with dental emergencies including those experiencing severe pain. Much like the hospital emergency room, urgent care is a viable option for tooth pain. However, urgent care offices are only able to offer temporary relief by prescribing pain medication and/or antibiotics. Although, lately I have had several patients come into my office with painful tooth infections and inform me they visited an Urgent Care facility for their dental emergency, but Urgent Care would not prescribe antibiotics. It goes without saying, urgent care facilities (and for that matter hospital emergency rooms) are unable to perform any dental procedures such as extractions or root canals to permanently eliminate the dental emergency.

The Cost:

• An average visit at an Urgent Care office can cost you $200-$300 (just for the visit and perhaps a prescription..)

• Visits to the Emergency Room can get crazy expensive running $400-$1500 at some hospitals. 

• At South Kansas City Emergency Dental, our fee is $125 for an emergency examination and any necessary X-rays. Dental extractions start at just $215....

With that being said, sometimes the emergency room is the only option for individuals with a serious dental emergency. It’s important to go the ER if you notice severe facial swelling, difficulty breathing or swallowing, uncontrolled bleeding, or high fever with swelling. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, over 2 million people seek care at the emergency department or urgent care every year for dental problems in the United States. The vast majority of these emergency visits occur because there are simply few other options and people suffering have nowhere else to turn. 

WHAT URGENT CARE CAN AND CANNOT DO FOR DENTAL PROBLEMS

Urgent Care facilities can help patients in the following ways:

1. Prescribing pain medication (over-the-counter medications such as NSAIDS or prescription medications). 

2. Antibiotics if there’s evidence of infection (maybe or maybe not, depending on the facility)

3. Possible information on a referral to a dentist for follow-up care

4. Basic dental X-rays at some locations (although rare)

Urgent Care facilities are unable to help patients with dental emergencies in the following ways:

1. Remove decay and restore a cavity (filling)

2. Perform a root canal

3. Remove a tooth (tooth extraction)

4.   Treat the underlying cause of the pain

In the end, although Urgent Care facilities are limited in their ability to help those patients with serious dental emergencies, they can be one of the only options for patients. Often a prescription for antibiotics is essential to reduce the pain a patient is experiencing from their tooth ailment and prevent a perhaps serious infection from spreading and causing more problems. Antibiotics are effective at reducing dental pain by destroying the bacteria causing the oral infection, and this in turn reduces the inflammation and pressure on the surrounding tissues, nerves, and gums. Most antibiotics work by attacking the bacteria (the cell wall) or inhibiting bacterial reproduction.

South Kansas City Emergency Dental in Pleasant Hill, Missouri (just south of Kansas City) offers weekend hours to help those in pain when other dentists are closed. We see patients from all over Missouri, including Northern Missouri, Central Missouri and Southern Missouri. We also see emergency dental patients from the Kansas side. To schedule an appointment at South Kansas City Emergency Dental, please visit our website at www.southkcemergencydental.com or call our office at 816-601-1817.