What Happens When You Postpone/Delay Dental Treatment

For a lot of people, rushing off to their Encino dentist’s office isn’t their favorite thing to do. Especially if they’ve been told they need dental work like a filling, crown, or root canal. And if their tooth doesn’t hurt to begin with, why bother rushing to get the dental treatment scheduled?

Unfortunately, dental problems don’t have to cause pain or discomfort to mean that there’s a serious issue going on. You could have a good sized cavity inside of your tooth without any symptoms of toothaches, sensitivity, or pain when you’re biting down. But your Encino dentist knows that it’s there from taking diagnostic X-rays and feeling the tooth with special instruments. Still, you decide to hold out and wait for the tooth to actually hurt before you go back to get the cavity filled.

But in the meantime, that cavity continues to harbor bacteria inside of your tooth structure. Each time you eat, the food particles feed the bacteria, which in turn create an acid byproduct that erodes and etches away at the tooth structure immediately next to it.

Long story short: your cavity grows larger and larger as each day goes by. Will it eventually hurt? Maybe. Maybe not. But there’s only so much tooth structure thata cavity can work through until you’ll see serious damage to your smile. Either the decay will get to the point where your tooth cracks/fractures into smaller pieces, or it will reach into the nerve and cause an abscess. Or both.

The most comfortable — and cost effective — solution is to have your existing tooth decay treated as soon as possible, before it spreads. Yes, cavities can expand into adjacent teeth!

For comfortable, cost-efficient dental treatment in Encino, contact Encino Dental Studio today.