A medical emergency can happen, usually when least expected, in a dental clinic during treatment. Approximately 90% of the crises are mild, but 8% were more serious. Medical emergencies are most likely to occur during and after local anaesthesia, primarily during a complicated tooth extraction or a prolonged root canal treatment that required multiple local anaesthetic injections to remove the pain. Among the different emergencies, over 60% are syncope, with low blood sugar level the next most frequent at 44%, followed by mild allergic reaction at 8.8% and ingestion of foreign bodies at 4.1%. It is important to realise that there is more than just this brief list of situations that can occur while patients are visiting your surgery.
