1.  Dental emergency

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 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
• 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
• Dental treatment required prior to critical medical procedures
• Final crown/bridge cementation if the temporary restoration is lost, broken or causing gingival irritation

Other urgent dental care:
• Extensive dental caries or defective restorations causing pain (Manage with interim restorative techniques when possible (silver diamine fluoride, glass ionomers)
• Suture removal
• Denture adjustment on radiation/oncology patients
• Denture adjustments or repairs when function impeded
• Replacing temporary filling on endo access openings in patients experiencing pain
• Snipping or adjustment of an orthodontic wire or appliances piercing or ulcerating the oral mucosa

2.  Dental non emergency procedures

Routine or non-urgent dental procedures include 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