Emergency Dental Care

In Case of Emergency

Story City Dental is here for you

Nobody plans for an emergency, but they tend to happen anyway! Perhaps you experience an extreme toothache on the weekend or a crown falls out. If you do experience an oral emergency, please call our number — our phone system will notify one of our doctors that there is a patient in need of emergency care.

If your emergency happens during our office hours, we’ll do whatever we can to get you on our schedule and out of pain as quickly as possible. If your emergency happens on the weekend, a doctor may be available to get you the care you need; however, please be patient for their call-back to assess the need to come into the office.

Dental emergency, tooth pain or both?

Emergencies tend to happen at the most inconvenient times. From our office’s experience, we find they tend to arise at higher frequencies just before a holiday weekend, just before you’re heading out of town for vacation, when you’re on your way to a special event, or as you’re trying to get through your work day.

However unexpected your emergency may be, don’t worry — Story City Dental is here to provide you with efficient emergency dental care.

Before your call, please prepare the following information to share with our staff:

Your level of pain and how long you’ve been in pain.
When you are available to come see us.
Any health history issues that might affect treatment.
Any medications you are taking for the dental emergency.

What to expect when you arrive at our office:

We’ll take an X-ray of the painful area, and one of our dentists will perform a gentle exam to diagnose the source of the problem.
Our dentist will provide you with a treatment plan that specifically outlines costs and insurance coverage.
Depending on the required procedure, we’ll do our best to provide same-day treatment.

Tooth pain can mean many different things, from the need for a root canal or extraction to the presence of a cavity. But tooth pain doesn’t always mean that a root canal or extraction will be necessary. Please call our office to have the dentist assess your pain and diagnose its cause.

How we handle dental emergencies

We’ll schedule you for the first available appointment and assess what we can do to immediately control your discomfort prior to your visit. If you need a filling, crown or extraction, we can typically start treatment the same day.

If your pain is due to something for which we cannot treat in the same day due to time constraints (such as a molar root canal), we’ll appoint you for another day that fits your busy schedule and allows us the appropriate amount of time to give you the personalized care you deserve. In the meantime, we’ll provide you with care that will minimize your pain and/or control any infection that may be present.

Not all dental emergencies are painful

Sometimes patients have dental emergencies with no pain. Some of these include:

A chipped tooth
A lost filling
A lost crown
A mouth sore
Generalized jaw pain from TMD/stress

If this is the case, we still want to see you as soon as possible and encourage you to call us to let us know what you’re experiencing. Many times, these non-painful emergencies can very quickly devolve from pain-free to a high pain level.

"Great place. Love this dentist. I'm an out of state trucker and had severe pain and they worked me right in and fixed my problem with absolute resolve. It's actually the first time in my life I gave the dentist a hug after. This is my first dentist from here on out. The staff also top notch."

Jason Bailey

“I’ve been in a couple emergency situations and got in right away and left with my problems fixed! Everyone is very friendly they saved me from an embarrassing incident, and I am very grateful. I highly recommend this wonderful dentist 👍“

Shannon Conrad