Dental emergency in Lugano and Bellinzona

During opening hours

Call your nearest practice straight away — Lugano or Bellinzona. We will assess the situation over the phone and give you an emergency appointment as quickly as possible. The cost of an emergency consultation is shown on our fees page.

• Lugano — +41 91 923 34 22 · WhatsApp (Mon–Fri 07:30–16:30)
• Bellinzona — +41 91 825 22 48 · WhatsApp (Mon–Fri 08:00–17:30)

Out of hours and on public holidays

For serious emergencies (major injuries, infections with swelling and fever, bleeding that will not stop), contact the Dental Emergency Service run by SSO-Ticino on 0840 505 505, available every day.

The most common emergencies

• Severe toothache — often a sign of deep decay or infection: do not put off being seen.
• Broken or chipped tooth — keep any fragments and contact us straight away.
• Tooth knocked out — pick it up by the crown (not the root), do not wash or scrub it, keep it in a SOS Denti kit (see below) or in milk or saliva, and get to us within 30–60 minutes: it can often be re-implanted.
• Swollen cheek or abscess — an infection that needs prompt treatment, especially if you also have a fever.
• Bleeding that will not stop — after an extraction or an injury, press on the area with gauze and contact us.

Even if you are not yet one of our patients, we will see you in an emergency.

The SOS Denti kit: in defibrillator cabinets across Ticino

Since 2023, Ticino has been the first Swiss canton to keep a dental first-aid kit in every public defibrillator cabinet — around 450 locations across the canton, an initiative of the Ticino dental association together with Ticino Cuore and the cantonal Department of Health. The kit contains a special solution that preserves a knocked-out or broken tooth for up to 24 hours (compared with roughly two hours in milk), greatly improving the chances of successful re-implantation. As our Med. dent. Yves Jacot-Descombes reminds us, every minute counts: what you do in the first few minutes decides the outcome.

What to do: retrieve the tooth, place it in the solution in the kit and call your dentist or the emergency service on 0840 505 505 straight away. To find the nearest defibrillator — and therefore the nearest kit — use the Ticino Cuore defibrillator map.