How Dental Emergencies Occur in Diabetic Patients?

Almost 9 % of the American population suffers from diabetes. This translates to over 29 million people being affected by this lifestyle disease. What’s more, nearly 1.7 million people are diagnosed with diabetes each year, and then there are another 8.1 million people who could be living with diabetes and have no clue. This is staggering!

Diabetes is a severe condition that affects how your body processes sugar. This, in turn, affects so many parts of your body, including your mouth. When you have uncontrolled diabetes, your oral health will also be in jeopardy. Your body will be ill-equipped to fight against infections that occur in the mouth. This might cause you to develop issues that may need immediate care from our emergency dentist in Raritan, NJ.

Can Diabetics Go to the Dentist?

Of course, they can! Proper oral hygiene is one of the main strategies to help prevent oral health issues that need emergency care.

If you have diabetes, you need to frequent our office for checkups. And the reason is simple. You are at a higher risk of developing the following oral health issues:

Dry Mouth

Diabetes increases the sugar levels in your mouth; this cuts down saliva flow, eventually causing dry mouth. Saliva helps protect the teeth, aids in digestion, and is necessary to flush bacteria down the throat. However, when your mouth is dry, you can develop infections, tooth decay, soreness, and ulcers.

Gum Inflammation

Diabetes usually thickens the blood vessels, thus slowing down the flow of nutrients to your tissues and removal of waste out of them. So, people with diabetes are prone to suffer from gum disease because the disease is caused by bacterial infection.

Poor Healing of the Tissues

Since there is impaired blood flow in people with diabetes, there will be impaired healing. So you might have mouth sores that seem never to heal.

Burning Tongue

People with diabetes usually have a high level of glucose in the mouth. This can lead to the development of oral thrush (a fungal infection). Thrush usually causes a burning sensation in the mouth.

Therefore, keeping your dental appointments is of paramount importance, lest you find yourself looking for our emergency dentist near you to treat issues that could otherwise be prevented.

How Do Dentists Manage Diabetes Patients?

It is tricky to deal with patients with diabetes. However, our dentist is well-skilled to deal with diabetics. This is because the risk of infection in people with diabetes is quite high. Procedures such as tooth extractions can be dangerous since they can provide an avenue for a fungal infection to get into the bloodstream.

However, our dentist has to ensure that you are safe and receive the oral care you need. Therefore, our dentist has strategies that can be employed, and they are:

• Ascertain what method you are using to control your diabetes, is it through diet alone, insulin injections, or tablets
• Since people with diabetes are immunocompromised, our dentist will provide early treatment for infections
• If you have uncontrolled diabetes, our dentist will prescribe prophylaxis antibiotics if you are scheduled to undergo tooth extractions
• Low blood sugar has to be avoided since this might cause brain damage
• Post extraction antibiotics will also be given to ensure that infections don’t arise and hinder wound healing
• Early morning appointments will be much better since this aids to minimize the risk of induced low blood sugar

Does Diabetes Affect Dental Treatment?

As mentioned earlier, it is challenging to treat patients with diabetes, especially uncontrolled diabetes. This is because diabetes affects the mouth by increasing the blood sugar levels in your oral cavity.

When your levels of sugar in the blood are high, it will aid the exponential growth of harmful bacteria. You will have to deal with several oral health issues that might need emergency treatment if this happens.

Over and above that, diabetes affects the blood vessels, making it much harder to remove waste from the cells, which reduces the body’s resistance to fighting off infection. Plus, wound healing slows down since blood will not flow normally.

Therefore, when you undergo treatment, diabetes may slow the rate at which healing ought to take place. However, if you have controlled diabetes, the process is much faster than in patients who have uncontrolled diabetes.

In any case, you need dental care to keep various oral health issues at bay. So, feel free to contact us at Stunning Smiles of Somerset if you need to book an appointment.