What to do right now for a knocked-out tooth, a broken tooth, swelling or an abscess — and when a hospital is the right call instead.
Most of what people worry about over a search bar is answered in two minutes on the phone. Tell us what is going on, and if it can wait, we will tell you that too.
The office is open Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. There is no online booking on this site — if it is easier, send the contact form and we will call you back.
Read this part first
Go to the nearest emergency room, or call 911. Do not wait to hear from us first, and do not wait to see whether it settles overnight.
Breathing and swallowing are the line for a reason. An infection that starts in a tooth can track down into the floor of the mouth and the neck, and the swelling that follows can narrow the airway. It is uncommon, it can move quickly, and a dental chair is the wrong place for it. The same goes for an injury involving more than teeth: broken facial bones and head injuries are assessed at a hospital.
Once you have been seen and you are stable, call us for the dental side of it. That part is ours.
This is the office you would be walking into: the lounge, the hallway, a treatment room, the sterilization room, and the coffee station.
Working out which it is
None of what follows is a diagnosis and none of it fixes the underlying problem. It is what protects the tooth and keeps you more comfortable until you are seen.
If you cannot tell which column you are in, that is what the phone is for, and it takes about two minutes.
While you wait
Where the reason behind an instruction is useful, it is explained. These are the moments when people are most likely to do the one thing that costs them the tooth.
General first-aid guidance, not advice about your own situation. Call us at (540) 288-2800 and we can tell you what applies to you.
One call
Judging a dental problem from the outside is genuinely hard, and doing it while something hurts is harder still. What the call involves is a real person, three questions and a plan — not a menu, and not a machine asking you to describe a broken tooth.
Where it is, how long it has been happening, whether there is swelling, bleeding, or a fever, and what you have already taken for it. That last one matters more than people expect — it changes what is safe to give you when you get here.
What to do for it now, what to avoid, and an honest answer on whether this needs a dentist, needs a hospital, or can be booked as a normal appointment.
Urgent problems come before routine ones on the schedule, and we will get you in as soon as the schedule allows. When you arrive, we work out what is causing it before anything is decided, and you hear the options before anything is done.
The office is open Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Outside those hours, anything on the hospital list above needs a hospital rather than a message.
Plenty of people end up calling about pain because a fear of the dentist kept them away long enough for a small problem to become an unavoidable one. If that is you, say so when you call — it changes how the appointment is planned, not how you are treated. Sedation is available here, and which option suits you depends on your health history and on what actually needs doing.
Not an emergency, and it has simply been a while? The first visit back is records, an exam and a plan, and nothing gets decided that day that you have not agreed to. What a first visit involves →
