Dr. Lily Taheri on Dental Emergencies: Why the First Hour Matters More Than Most Patients Realise

Sunday evening. A cracked tooth from a bite gone wrong. A child's knocked-out front tooth after a fall at the park. A throbbing abscess that has been building for days and finally becomes impossible to ignore. These are the moments that reveal a great deal about a dental practice — not the scheduled check-up, not the cosmetic consultation, but the call that comes outside of normal hours from someone who is frightened and in pain. Dr. Lily Taheri has fielded those calls. As the principal dentist at Connolly Dental, the QIP-accredited practice she leads in Perth's northern suburbs, she has built a clinical environment designed to handle the full spectrum of dental need — including the kind that cannot wait for a Tuesday morning appointment.

Dr. Taheri holds a Doctor of Dental Surgery and carries the highest level of certification in Digital Smile Design methodology — a credential that reflects her investment in precision diagnostics and treatment planning. But it is her approach to urgent care that defines the day-to-day rhythm of the practice. Connolly Dental offers same-day emergency appointments, and the clinical team — which includes senior dentist Dr. Andrew Tilt and Dr. Yasmine Mishani — is structured to absorb urgent cases without displacing the patients already scheduled. That capacity is not accidental. It is the result of deliberate practice design.

The Clock Starts When the Injury Happens

Dr. Taheri is precise about something that most patients do not know until it is too late: in dental emergencies, the window for the best possible outcome is often measured in minutes and hours, not days. The example she returns to most frequently is the avulsed tooth — a tooth that has been completely knocked out of the socket, most commonly in children and young adults during sport or a fall.

"If a tooth is knocked out cleanly and the patient gets to us within thirty minutes, reimplantation is often possible," she explains. "After an hour, the periodontal ligament cells on the root surface begin to die, and the chances of the tooth successfully reattaching drop significantly. After two hours, we are almost always looking at a replacement option rather than saving the original tooth." The clinical guidance she gives to families in that situation is specific: keep the tooth moist — ideally in milk or the patient's own saliva — do not scrub the root surface, and call the practice immediately.

Dental abscesses carry a different kind of urgency. An abscess is a bacterial infection that has progressed to the point of forming a pocket of pus at the root of a tooth or in the surrounding gum tissue. Left untreated, the infection does not simply stabilise — it spreads. In serious cases, dental infections can track along tissue planes into the jaw, neck, or floor of the mouth, creating a medical emergency that goes well beyond dentistry. Dr. Taheri is direct about this. "An abscess that is causing facial swelling, difficulty swallowing, or a fever is not something to manage with over-the-counter pain relief and a plan to call the dentist next week," she says. "That is a same-day situation."

Cracked and fractured teeth occupy a more ambiguous space, and this is where Dr. Taheri's emphasis on thorough clinical assessment becomes particularly relevant. Not every crack is a crisis, but the severity of a crack is not always apparent from pain alone — some significant fractures cause minimal initial discomfort, while minor chips can be acutely sensitive. At Connolly Dental, digital imaging and intraoral scanning allow the clinical team to evaluate the extent of a fracture with a level of precision that a visual examination alone cannot provide, which shapes both the urgency and the treatment pathway from the first appointment.

What Emergency Dentistry Looks Like in Perth's Northern Suburbs

Connolly sits in Perth's northern suburbs — a part of the city that has grown substantially over the past two decades, bringing with it a large population of young families, active residents, and an increasing demand for accessible healthcare that does not require a long drive into the CBD. Dr. Taheri is conscious of that demographic and what it means for the kinds of dental emergencies the practice sees most frequently.

Sport-related dental injuries are a consistent presence. Perth's climate and outdoor culture mean that children and adults are active year-round — football, cricket, basketball, cycling — and the practice sees the consequences of that activity regularly. Dr. Taheri advocates strongly for custom-fitted mouthguards as a preventive measure, particularly for children in contact sports, and she is candid about the gap between the protection offered by a custom appliance and the boil-and-bite versions available at sporting goods stores. "A properly fitted mouthguard is made from an impression of the patient's actual teeth," she says. "It fits precisely, stays in place during impact, and distributes force in a way that a generic appliance simply cannot replicate."

The practice's extended hours — open until 8pm on Thursdays and available on alternate Saturdays — reflect a practical acknowledgment that dental emergencies do not confine themselves to business hours. For working parents who cannot easily leave mid-afternoon, or for patients whose pain becomes unmanageable in the evening, those hours represent access that matters. The same-day appointment model means that a patient who calls in the morning with an acute problem is not being asked to manage their pain for three days while waiting for availability.

What to Do — and What Not to Do — Before You Get There

Dr. Taheri's advice for the period between a dental emergency and a clinical appointment is grounded in one principle: do not make it worse. Well-intentioned interventions — attempting to reposition a displaced tooth, applying topical numbing agents directly to an abscess, or using household adhesives on a broken crown — can complicate the clinical picture and, in some cases, damage tissue that would otherwise be straightforward to treat.

For pain management before an appointment, she recommends standard over-the-counter anti-inflammatories such as ibuprofen, taken according to the package instructions, as more effective than paracetamol alone for dental pain, which typically has an inflammatory component. Cold compresses applied to the outside of the face can reduce swelling. For a dislodged crown or veneer, keeping the restoration and bringing it to the appointment is useful — it is sometimes possible to recement it — but attempting to do so at home without the right materials risks trapping bacteria beneath the restoration or damaging the underlying tooth.

The call to the practice before arriving is also worth making. Connolly Dental's team can triage over the phone, confirm appointment availability, and give specific guidance based on the nature of the emergency — including whether the situation warrants going directly to a hospital emergency department rather than a dental practice. That phone assessment is a genuine clinical service, not a scheduling formality.

A Practice Built for More Than the Routine

Dr. Lily Taheri did not build Connolly Dental around emergency dentistry alone — the practice offers the full range of general, restorative, and cosmetic dental services, and her Digital Smile Design certification speaks to a deep investment in planned, precision-led aesthetic work. But the infrastructure that makes excellent cosmetic dentistry possible — digital imaging, intraoral scanning, a well-equipped clinical environment, a team of experienced dentists — is the same infrastructure that makes excellent emergency care possible. The two are not separate offerings. They are expressions of the same standard.

For residents of Connolly and the surrounding northern suburbs who find themselves in the position of needing urgent dental care, the practice's same-day availability and extended hours mean that the right clinical response is closer than they may realise. The first step is the same one Dr. Taheri recommends for every emergency: call early, describe what has happened accurately, and let the clinical team guide what happens next.